


Long Road Home

by Amphoteric



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 43,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23251711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amphoteric/pseuds/Amphoteric
Summary: A gradually building love affair between B'Elanna Torres and Seven of Nine
Relationships: Seven of Nine/B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 150
Kudos: 215





	1. Efficiency

**Author's Note:**

> This story picks up somewhere around early season seven. Mostly adheres to canon. Curious to know if anyone still reads Star Trek fics.

The alarm chirps like a reedy, warbly bird whose song grows more insistent. Its demand for attention drags B’Elanna Torres from a dream. In the dark, she fumbles and hits the off button. 0330 ticks over to 0331. She lies still, summoning the will to get up at this unseemly hour, as she had done for the last couple of weeks.

She’d been rostered on to the early Alpha shift; 0400 through to 1600. It was silly, she supposed, to loathe “early mornings” in space, where the concepts of morning, noon and night held little meaning, but she’d always been a night owl. Engineering was always quieter at night, the gentle hum of her engines would wrap her up like a swaddling blanket. Without the distractions of other people, she was in equilibrium; better able to solve problems, better able to coax more out of Voyager’s engines.

Yesterday, she’d brought the issue of the new shift rotation up with Chakotay, hoping to persuade him to change the schedule back. She’d laid on the 'good ol’ Maquis days' reminiscences nice and thick, trading on their shared past, reminding him of the particularly ferocious reputation she had on their Maquis ship, the  _ Valjean _ , should anyone have disturbed her before lunch time. Those days were now long ago and B’Elanna wondered what they had truly been to one another- something more than comrades, but something less than partners. Chakotay had leaned forward and smiled in that way that made him look more wise and handsome than perhaps he was. It was deliberately disarming; to soften the disappointment that would follow. B’Elanna had pressed her lips together thinly- a pretence at magnanimity.

‘ _Sorry, B’Elanna. The Captain wants us to get through this region of space as quickly as possible._ ’ Chakotay had said.

B’Elanna had known this was a euphemism for the fact that astrometrics scans had detected Borg activity, and it would be best if maximum warp was available at the drop of a hat. ‘ _We might get through it quicker if I wasn’t so tired all the time._ ’

‘ _Seven ran a crew efficiency analysis, and this was the best option. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few._ ’ He’d smiled again, and that was that. 

_ The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, indeed.  _ B’Elanna sits up and rubs her bleary eyes, cursing the Borg she held responsible for making her function at this unseemly hour. Tom wasn’t in bed beside her. The sheets, fresh yesterday, smelled only of her fragrance. He should be here, she thinks.

A glow emanates from the living space. Like an engineering puzzle, she puts the pieces together. The other day Tom had said something about trying out a new holodeck program with Harry; she hadn’t really paid attention to any of the details. He must have got back late and fallen asleep in front of the television he’d replicated for their quarters. It was such an odd form of entertainment, television. It lacked the sensory depth provided by holodeck programs, or the imagination needed to read a book, or any kind of physical exertion whatsoever. She can better understand Tom’s preoccupation with the  _ Captain Proton _ holo-adventures, although she much prefers her climbing programs. Television was just so sedentary.

She peers towards the sofa and makes out a shadowy form lying on top of it. The light from the screen illuminates a bowl with a few unpopped popcorn kernels together with a glass bottle of beer on the floor beneath Tom’s arm. The moving image on the screen reminds her of snow. Why hadn’t he come to bed? She leaves him sleep and hurries into the shower.

B’Elanna tiptoes into the living space with a blanket for Tom. He’s snoring lightly and still wearing shoes. They were really quite ugly. The shirt he’s wearing must be some kind of archaic Earth sports team uniform. Football? Basketball? Handball? Was handball even a thing, she wonders. Tom’s penchant for 20th century Earth artefacts and pursuits was something she’d never understood, nor shared any interest in. 

“Fuck,” she curses out loud, hopping on one foot. “Computer: lights.” She looks over at the black bag that her toe had stubbed. “What the hell is in that thing?” she yells, hopping on one foot and rubbing the toes of the other.

Tom is awake. He stretches, feeling his forearm absently. “My bowling balls?”

Bowling. That was it- Tom’s new fascination. “Why the hell are they in the middle of the floor?”

“Let me look at your foot,” Tom says, stalling on answering the question. “We might need to call The Doctor for this emergency.”

B’Elanna knows he’s trying to lighten the mood with a joke. But she isn’t in the mood, and the joke is at her expense. Her foot hurts- not an emergency- but it hurts. It hurts even more when she remembers that Tom had borrowed her replicator rations to conjure this new toy. He’d used her rations last month, too. What was it he’d replicated again? That machine with the blinking lights and the curious noises? Ah yes, a pinball machine- that’s what he called it. He’d played with that exactly twice before growing bored with it. It now stands sadly in the corner of their living space- blinking away to no one in particular. Their quarters looked more and more like how she imagined a teenage Tom’s bedroom might have looked, and less and less like a place that had any of her identity stamped onto it.

“Leave it alone, it’s fine.” She doesn’t have the energy to get into an argument now, and besides, she has to get ready for work. “Computer: coffee, hot.”

Tom follows her into the bathroom when she goes to clean her teeth, and gently puts his hands on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry. I got back late. Harry’s having a hard time. I didn’t want to wake you and I must have crashed out in front of the TV,” he says to her reflection in the mirror. He drops a kiss on her shoulder and smiles boyishly. He could sure turn on the charm when he wanted to. “Am I forgiven?”

How could she say no? She turns in his arms and pecks him on the lips- almost in contrition.

“Mmm. Minty fresh.”

“I’m sorry too. I’m tired and grumpy, and I hate that we’re out of sync.”

“Me too.” His hands are wandering over her body. “I miss you.”

B’Elanna enjoys the affection, but pats him gently, signalling there isn’t enough time to start something. “What’s up with Harry?” she asks as she brushes her hair.

Tom’s brow furrows. “Oh, you know, same old same old...” He yawns as he trails off.

“No juicy details?”

“Sworn to secrecy.” He mimes locking his lips, but his eyes avoid hers.

It was unlike Tom not to spill details on whichever crush Harry was pining after. It irritates her- this feeling that he’s keeping something from her. “Go back to bed,” she says.

Tom goes, perhaps a little too quickly, and by the time she leaves for work, he’s fast asleep.

B’Elanna is drinking another cup of coffee and sifting through the latest diagnostics of the warp core. Everything was well within recommended operating parameters, but there was a point zero zero two variance in the stability of the warp field that bothers her. There is no obvious explanation for it; Lieutenant Vorik posits a theory that the high density of transwarp conduits in the sector might be responsible. She is not convinced; her gut feeling tells her there’s a mechanical problem somewhere. Perhaps she’s just anxious because Voyager is sneaking through a Borg stronghold, but if there is a malfunction waiting to happen, she wants to get out ahead of it. 

“Vorik, hold down the fort. I’m gonna check out a hunch.”

“Aye, Lieutenant.” The degree to which his eyebrow arches is an indicator of how illogical he, a vulcan, finds the concept of hunches, although he had come to implicitly trust in Torres’ hunches.

“I’ll be in the Jeffries Tubes if anyone needs me.”

She crawls along the tube, toolkit in one hand. It was comforting, being in the bowels of her ship listening to the susurrations of her engines. Very few of the crew, even among the engineers, would ever venture this far into the maze of tubes in Voyager’s belly. It dawns on her that Voyager is probably her most intimate relationship; she wonders what the old girl might say if she could talk.

She stops in her tracks. She is not alone down here. The scent of vanilla with notes of rare metal alloys perfumes the air. Her sense of smell is keen enough to be able to identify individual members of the crew, and there is only one person this can be.

She opens the hatch to the junction. “Seven.” B’Elanna had had misgivings about Seven since the drone had first set foot on Voyager. She tolerates her only to the extent that she has to, and presumes the feeling (or at least whatever approximation to feelings Seven was capable of) is mutual.

“Lieutenant.” It seems that Seven can recognise her by a sense other than sight, too, because she continues making adjustments to the relays without looking up. 

It irritates B’Elanna that Seven doesn’t have the decency to stop whatever it is she’s doing. She’s even more irritated that because of the shift change brought about by Seven’s crew efficiency analysis she’s too tired for the inevitable conversation on protocol they are about to have. “What are you doing?”

Seven makes one last tweak and clasps her hands behind her back. “I am testing whether a different power configuration will boost the Astrometrics sensors. Upgrading the sensors for the capacity to detect Borg ships at a greater range would be prudent.”

B’Elanna sighs all the way to her boots. She can’t face rehashing an argument that they’d had dozens of times before, but as the ranking officer she feels she must. “You know it’s standard protocol to ask me for approval before you do any work on Engineering systems?”

“Yes.”

She sighs again. “Then why didn’t you?”

“At the last briefing, the Captain ordered all of us to work to traverse this space quickly and without incident. I took this to mean the standard protocols were superseded.”

“Well, you were wrong,” B’Elanna says impatiently.

“I also-,” Seven falters.

“What?” snaps B’Elanna.

“I thought that I could test the alternative configuration and restore the previous configuration before your shift. I did not wish to wake you in the middle of the night.” 

“Don’t pretend that breaking the rules was for my benefit.” B’Elanna says gruffly, but her tone isn’t as sharp as it has been.

Seven hands her a PADD. “These are my complete findings, should you wish me to implement the new configuration.”

B’Elanna taps the tablet, scanning the data.

“I did not wake you for _my_ benefit. I have heard that you have expressed anger towards me because of the new shift system.” Seven looks her in the eye, directly.

“You’ve heard that? From who?” It really could have been just about anyone; she had hardly been judicious with whom she had expressed her frustrations.

“I would prefer not to say.”

That was a surprise. Seven had never withheld an objective fact before, to B’Elanna’s knowledge. “Well, you heard right. I am angry. I hate early mornings and I hate surprises like this.” She’s kneeling on the floor, while she scours the information on the PADD in front of her. She glances up at Seven who is standing tall, hands clasped behind her back, watching her look over the calculations. It feels insufferably awkward. “You wanna sit while I look at this?”

“I prefer to stand.”

“Of course you do,” B’Elanna mutters, shifting position so that Seven isn’t looming over her shoulder. Her inner anger abates somewhat when she sees the scale of improvement Seven has made to the sensors. The work is actually incredible. Galling, but incredible. “Right. I like what you’ve done with the sensors, but it’s causing a variance in the warp field.”

“What is the variance?”

“Point zero zero two.” B’Elanna catches the twitch of Seven’s ocular implant. “Yes. I know it’s not a significant variance. But we’re in Borg Central and I don’t want to be assimilated.”

“I do not wish to repeat the experience, either.”

B’Elanna notices the muscles in Seven’s face tighten momentarily. She makes some corrections to the PADD. “Try rerouting these circuits instead. That should bypass the effect on the warp field without reducing the improvement to the sensors.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Seven begins immediately, her hands sweeping over Voyager’s circuitry. Each individual movement is calculated for maximum efficiency, but somehow it all flows together like a mesmeric dance. B’Elanna doesn’t even notice she’s stopped to watch Seven work.

“Was there anything else, Lieutenant?”

“No. Yes. Next time, follow protocol.”


	2. Chapter 2

Torres arrives a fraction early for the senior staff briefing; there’s no one else here yet. She’s exhausted and picks the seat furthest from the head of the table. It’s the first time she’s sat down in hours. Eyes-closed, she rolls the back of her head against the headrest, a sort of improvised massage. Seven arrives precisely on time. B’Elanna cracks one eye open, acknowledging her shipmate’s presence non-verbally. Seven elects to sit on the chair opposite. B’Elanna registers how stilted Seven’s transition from standing to sitting is. It’s such a marked contrast to how fluidly she performs engineering tasks. She really must prefer to stand, B’Elanna thinks. Her idle contemplations are broken when the bridge officers file in.

Tom leaves a space between himself and B’Elanna, which was quickly taken by Harry. B’Elanna and Tom had adopted a convention (more accurately, she had enforced a convention) of not sitting together in staff meetings. Ordinarily, fraternisation among senior officers would have raised some censure from the commanding officers, but out here in the Delta Quadrant Janeway had been wise enough to soften the application of some Starfleet regulations. B’Elanna wanted to show her captain that regardless of her personal relationships, she could be counted on to behave professionally. It was just one small piece of her eternal struggle to prove her worth. While she knew she still had some steps to go to become a model of the cool detachment that Starfleet officers were moulded into, she was certainly capable of not needing to sit next to her boyfriend in meetings.

“Hey, B’Elanna,” Tom stage-whispers. “How’s your foot?”

Tom evidently had even more steps to go before reaching the Starfleet standard of decorum. She’s aware of several pairs of eyes now regarding her, especially the cool blue pair opposite. “Fine,” she replies flatly, inviting no further queries.

Janeway- always a minute late- marches in, gripping a cup of coffee. In itself, it wasn’t so unusual for the captain to bring her refreshment of choice to meetings. However, when her hands never left the mug- her elegant fingers either curled around the handle or else stroking up and down the sides drawing comfort from the warm vessel- it was a tell that the awesome responsibility of bringing the crew home safely was weighing on her even more so than usual.

Janeway stood at the head of the conference table, one arm crossed over her body, pensively holding her coffee. “Seven, have you completed mapping this region?”

“Yes Captain. We are currently at the periphery of an area of high Borg activity. I have been able to detect several transwarp conduits that intersect with this region of space.” As Seven delivers her report, Janeway glances occasionally at the stars through the window, as if expecting a Borg cube to drop out of transwarp beside them.

“How large a region are we talking about? Can we go around?”

Seven is always perfectly prepared for briefings. This time is no exception, B’Elanna thinks with some envy as the ex-drone proceeds with her analysis. Seven presses a button and a 3D projection of space appears in the middle of the table. Even the animated model of Voyager is precisely detailed. B’Elanna has to bite on the inside of her cheek to hem in the caustic comment that’s desperate to escape. Her eyes briefly meet Seven’s through the projected constellations. Seven turns her attention toward Janeway immediately, but not before B’Elanna sees a flicker of something. She presses another button to overlay the model with an illustration of the route around the region. “If we attempt to avoid the Borg, we would add significant time to our journey.”

Janeway is sitting in her chair now, her eyes following the tiny model Voyager meandering for light years around the space. “That would add months,” she mutters almost to herself. “What about going through?”

Prepared for this question too, Seven switches to an animation of the optimum course through the region. “This is the most efficient course. However, it is highly likely that we will encounter Borg vessels.” Pithy analysis complete, she turns the screen off and sits down.

“You said ‘efficient course’, is there a ‘safe’ course?” Tom interjects.

“The probability of encountering Borg vessels for any possible course is not significantly different from any other possible course through the region. The course I suggested will take the least time.” Seven’s tone has a faint edge of disdain, as if irritated by having to explain something rather simple to a child. It was not nearly subtle enough for B’Elanna to not pick up on. She chalks it up as a manifestation of Seven’s superiority complex. Ordinarily, she would have been annoyed for the lack of respect offered to Tom, but today she can’t summon feeling offended on his behalf. She lets it pass without comment.

“So there is no safe route?” The captain asks pointedly.

Seven, chastened by Janeway’s sharp tone, offers a more fulsome analysis. “It is extremely improbable that Voyager will avoid contact with the Borg in this region. I recommend that we proceed on the basis of anticipating a confrontation.”

“Tuvok, what’s Voyager’s tactical readiness?”

“Tactical and security have been running additional drills in case of hostile intruders. Voyager has a full complement of torpedoes. All bays are armed. Phaser banks have been programmed to fire on rotating frequencies favouring the upper harmonic bands.”

“B’Elanna?”

“Voyager is in as good a shape as she can be, but if we get caught in a firefight-”

“All bets are off?”

“Yeah.”

Janeway takes a thoughtful sip of coffee. “Mr. Neelix, how long will our food stores last, assuming that we don’t make any stops for trade or exploration?”

“Between the produce harvested from hydroponics and the dry food in the cargo bays, we have thirty days of full rations, Captain.”

“Does that include coffee, Neelix?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s a relief.” Janeway flashes a brief smile. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Captain, I suggest we consider further rationing the replicators,” Chakotay interjects.

“To conserve power in case we need it?” She mulls the idea. B’Elanna silently considers the proposal too. The power saved would be minimal, but Voyager’s survival in the Delta Quadrant thus far had been carried on the most razor-thin of margins on more than one occasion. It would also mean a heavy reliance on Neelix’s culinary skills, which doesn’t fill B’Elanna with joy.

Janeway nods her assent. “Agreed. Neelix, I guess you’ll be cooking for one hundred and thirty seven for the time being.”

“Yes Ma’am.” His chest puffs out in pride. Neelix had been their guide in the early months of their journey after being stranded. He knew the species they encountered; the Ocampa, the Kazon. But the closer they got to home, the further they were from his. They had long ago breached the limits of his local knowledge and his contributions in officer briefings had diminished.

B’Elanna wonders if Neelix feels redundant now. She does, sometimes, since Seven had become part of the crew, and she hates it. Inside Seven was all the knowledge the Borg considered “relevant” to their relentless pursuit of technological dominance. It had been ruthlessly distilled from the irrelevant stray thoughts and emotional detritus carried by those unfortunate enough to meet the sharp end of an assimilation tubule. Seven probably possessed the most brilliant mind of any human in the galaxy and certainly the most brilliant mind in this room. B’Elanna was no intellectual slouch; before Seven, only Janeway came close to her grasp of the finer points of warp theory. But now? Seven was in a league of her own. In moments of insecurity, B’Elanna expected Janeway would promote Seven to Chief Engineer. It was a huge relief when the Borg had chosen to carve out a solitary niche in Astrometrics- Engineering was not big enough for the both of them.

Janeway drinks the last dregs of coffee and finally lets go of the mug. “So, we can take the scenic route and add months to our journey or we can try and punch through. Opinions?”

Voyager’s crew had come up against the Borg before and won. Not a one among them would claim they were unscathed by those experiences, but none of them would bow to fear. The officers expressed unanimous agreement to press on through Borg territory in the fastest possible time.

Janeway sends a look to Chakotay. No words pass between them, but B’Elanna knows that her two commanding officers somehow agree on the course of action. She envies them their unspoken communication- how could two people be in sync like that? She glances at Tom and realises that she has no idea what his thoughts are.

“We will be punching through,” Janeway says. She issues orders to each department head, as she would at any other staff meeting, but then she adds, “I know that I can depend on all of you. Together, we will get through this. Dismissed.”

A couple of days go by without incident. Despite the Borg threat- a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads- the mood on-board is as relaxed as possible for a ship on constant yellow alert. Torres heads to the Mess Hall for lunch, hoping to catch Tom. She’d barely seen him since the officer briefing. With any luck he’d be here for breakfast. With the replicators being so tightly rationed the line for Neelix’s cooked food is long, although the length of the line is hardly an endorsement of the culinary fayre on offer. Even from her spot right at the back, the pungent smell of leola root is overpowering. Its bitter taste catches in her throat. She glances at the bank of replicators wistfully. She’s tempted to skip the line and replicate something edible, but she doesn’t want to burn through her rations just yet. She’d rather save them up and splurge them later on the comfort of banana pancakes dripping in maple syrup. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine that instead of leola root she’s inhaling sugary-sweetness. Tom’s laughter floats down the queue from ahead of her. Excited to see him, she rounds the counter and stops dead in her tracks. The Delaney twins, Nicoletti and Celes are all gathered around him, enthralled by the yarn he is spinning. She leans against the wall to listen too, unseen by the group.

“Victory makes all the pain worth it,” Tom chuckles.

“You’re such a hero,” Jenny Delaney coos, playfully massaging Tom’s forearm and wrist.

Nicoletti scoffs. “Ten-pin is hardly Parrises Squares.”

“Hey, these are the hands of an artist!”

“Pilots are artists now?”

“When you fly like Tom does, yes.” Jenny purrs. She still hangs off his arm in an over-familiar way, and he allows it. Welcomes it, even. B’Elanna thinks she sees a look pass between Jenny and her sister, Megan.

Jenny Delaney is a doe-eyed, slender woman with flawless skin. As a young kid, B’Elanna’s father used to read human fairy tales to her from a real book- paper pages bound in a mahogany-red leather. Beautiful princesses awaited their dashing princes who would slay ugly monsters to usher in their happily ever afters. Jenny looked like the artistic renditions of princesses from those books. Tom could even be her prince.

B’Elanna touches her fingers to her forehead and recalls the day when she realised she would always be the ugly monster, never the princess. It was her first day of Kindergarten. The other kids had been scared of her- this unruly child with masses of hair and sharp teeth. And that forehead. Nobody sat next to her. Nobody talked to her; they’d whisper about her and avert their eyes if she looked in their direction. She felt small then. And small now. Invisible. Tom still hasn’t noticed her.

Jenny laughs at something Tom said. She tosses her long brown hair, exposing the delicate skin of her neck. He grins in that boyish way he does and while his friends were charmed by it, B’Elanna realises she is inured to its effects. In that instant she is reminded of why her father had left her mother; the desire for an “easier life”. How much she loathed that phrase. It had turned out that one of the ingredients for her father’s easier life was an easier woman. Before she stopped contact with her father, he’d sent her a letter with a picture of himself and this new woman. Pretty and blonde with the tiniest overbite in her smile, she looked fun and uncomplicated; the antithesis of her mother. He’d wanted them to meet; an idea which B’Elanna had found about as appealing as a plate of cold Gagh.

Surely Tom was simply being friendly; he wouldn’t be so stupid as to flaunt an affair in front of the crew. Would he? But then why does she feel sick? Feeling as though she may do something rash, she slinks out of the Mess like a wounded animal.

She stalks through the corridors, retreating to Engineering, her safe space. She mutters to herself along the way.  _ I’m overreacting, I must be _ . The tension between her Klingon instincts that scented out dishonour and her human empathy that urged caution and understanding frays her sense of self. She’s just about persuaded herself that she is reading too much into a friendly gathering and is about to head back to Mess Hall but then she runs into Harry.

“Hey B’Elanna.” He smiles wearily.

“Hey Starfleet. You okay?” B’Elanna liked Harry. Always sincere. Always dependable. Often nervous.

“Jumpy. I’m triple-checking every sensor echo in case it’s a Borg ship.” Tight lines appear on his face, making him look much older than he is. No one put more pressure on Harry than Harry. “I don’t want to let anything slip by.”

“You won’t.” She pats his arm supportively.

“Thanks.” He exhales. “Time goes so slowly sometimes.”

“We’ll make it, Harry. We’ve come through worse,” she reassures him like an older sister might. They are close in age, but unlike her he’d never experienced hardship until the Delta Quadrant.

“Yeah. Hey, are you going to come bowling with us?”

She looks at him with slight puzzlement. It wasn’t often that she was invited to join the Tom-Harry wonder-duo on their holodeck adventures- her inability to get into the spirit of the Captain Proton adventures where she was invariably expected to play the part of the damsel in distress had put paid to that. She doesn’t begrudge their friendship though- they complement each other in a lot of ways. Harry is a steadying influence on Tom, while Tom helps to broaden Harry’s sheltered horizons. Selfishly she is glad Tom has such a close friend- having someone else to soak up Tom’s puppyish energy from time to time has no doubt prevented the tensions in their relationship from turning into cracks.

“I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun,” she demurs.

“It’s not like Captain Proton and Buster Kincaid. We’ve got a bunch of people hooked.” Harry enthusiastically explained that they were running a league, that Tom was the best player, but that The Doctor was surprisingly handy. B’Elanna’s stomach sank. It was not a revelation to hear that Tom and Jenny Delaney were a team. It dawns on B’Elanna that Tom had ginned up the “Harry’s going through a rough patch” fiction as cover for all the ‘fun’ he’d been having bowling with Jenny Fucking Delaney. Now she feels foolish; why hadn’t Tom told her the truth? Harry is still gushing about this new craze, but all she can hear is a high-pitched ringing in her ears that keeps getting louder and louder until she can take it no more.

“That’s great, Harry. I’ve really got to get back to Engineering though.”

She reaches her office only for her face to flush darkly with humiliation. She would never be a woman who would giggle and simper like Jenny Delaney, but perhaps that’s what Tom wanted; someone easy and agreeable. Someone who’d play with him and laugh at his jokes. She closes her eyes, but all she can see is Tom and Jenny, flirting. Had it gone further than that? Her instinct was to march back to the Mess and give Tom an unfiltered piece of her mind- her younger self surely would have- but now she was the Chief Engineer with responsibilities and hard-won respect. She balls up her fists so tightly that her fingernails dig into her palms. She forces breaths in through her nose and releases them slowly out through her mouth. She listens to the engines, their steady pulsing a lullaby that might restore her equilibrium. Inhale. Exhale.  _ One, two, three, four, five, six _ …

“Lieutenant Torres?”

“Seven,” rolls out on a growl. Perfect fucking timing. “What do you want?”

Most people would have heard the hostility dripping off each syllable. Most people would have seen how agitated Torres was. Most people would have taken a step back, mumbled an apology for disturbing her and tried again later. Seven was not most people. In fact, she was unique; a quality that could not be less endearing to B’Elanna at this particular moment. Seven stood with a straight back, hands behind her. One might describe her posture as perfect, save for the slight angling of her neck to look the Chief Engineer in the eye- looking down on her literally and, B’Elanna suspected, figuratively.

“I have been working on further adjustments to the sensors. My calculations indicate that their sensitivity can be boosted by five percent.”

“Five percent?” B’Elanna repeats incredulously. She can scarcely believe that any aspect of Voyager can be improved by five percent by simple reconfigurations- point five percent maybe. If it had been anyone else, B’Elanna would have assumed this conclusion was borne of wild exaggeration, hubris or incompetence. But because it was Seven it was probably a stroke of savant-like brilliance.

“Five percent,” Seven affirms. “May I show you the schematics?”

“You mean you didn’t go ahead and do it already?”

Seven pauses, as if calculating something more complex than sensor output efficiencies. “I am following the protocol you instructed me to adhere to in the Jeffries Tube the other day. Was I incorrect to do so?”

“No, you were correct.” Torres knows she ought probably to apologise to Seven for snapping at her- it wasn’t her fault that Tom had been gallivanting with Jenny Delaney, after all- but she doesn’t. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Seven takes her through the chain of rerouted warp and power relays, explaining how each reconfiguration would make a contribution to the sensors. Seven’s delivery is ruthlessly efficient- no extraneous words, no flourishes intended to elicit compliments. B’Elanna uncharitably considers Seven’s work to be the same as the assimilation techniques of the Borg- she succeeds by brute-force, relentlessly trying every combination of possibilities until an advance is made. That must be how she had derived this suite of rerouted and modified pathways. The result is amazing, but it is possible only because of Seven’s lack of humanity. This Borg would never hear a lullaby in the sound of the engines, B’Elanna thinks.

“Make the changes.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Seven hesitates. “I believe it will be more efficient if we work together.”

“Fine,” B’Elanna replies.

The Jeffries Tubes are narrow enough that they are shoulder to shoulder as they crawl along. Neither speaks; B’Elanna is preoccupied by Tom and Jenny. How is she going to bring it up with Tom? Imagined conversation after imagined conversation runs through her head. In pretty much all of them, she ends up accusing him of sleeping with Jenny Delaney, and tossing him out of their quarters. In dire need of an outside opinion, she glances sideways at her companion. Seven’s expression is completely impassive; staring straight ahead, seemingly concentrating totally on moving through the tube efficiently. B’Elanna snorts at herself for even considering leaning on the fucking Borg for emotional support.

“Let’s do this quickly,” B’Elanna says, lifting the access panel away from the relay circuits. “I’ll make the adjustments. Monitor the stability of the power grid; I don’t want to overload the plasma manifold.” Torres takes the isolinear spanner from her toolkit. If Seven’s eyebrow quirks a little, she says nothing as she draws her tricorder out.

Work has always helped B’Elanna to clear her mind. She gets into a rhythm of disconnecting each circuit, reconfiguring it and then reconnecting it to the grid. After each change, Seven reports that there is no significant fluctuation in the power grid. No other conversation passes between them.

B’Elanna has done more than half of the reconfigurations. A strange noise knocks her out of the flow. She’s mortified once she realises that the noise is her stomach growling. Snarling might be a better way of putting it. The acoustics of the chamber they are in serve to amplify and reverberate the indelicate sound. She remembers she is hungry because she had skipped lunch. She remembers she skipped lunch because of Tom and Jenny.

“Are you injured?” Seven asks, looking somewhat perturbed. Immediately, she turns the tricorder toward B’Elanna, scanning for any physiological ailment.

B’Elanna pushes the tricorder away. “I’m hungry.” She is met with a blank expression, like a computer that fails to recognise an instruction. Seven doesn’t know what hungry feels like, she realises. Seven’s stomach would never growl because all of her physiological functions were perfectly maintained by her nanoprobes. She didn’t even need to eat food; her regeneration cycles provided her with the energy needed to sustain both her biological and synthetic components.

“Your heart rate is slightly elevated, you are perspiring, and you look pale.” Seven’s tone sounds more gentle than usual, B’Elanna thinks.

“I’m fine. Let’s finish this up, okay?” As she turns to the circuits, the spanner slips out of her hand; the skin on her palms is clammy. Seven catches it before it can clatter to the floor. She scans Torres with the tricorder, ignoring the engineer waving her away.

“I missed lunch; it’s nothing,” B’Elanna says dismissively. Her tone makes clear that she is not prepared to elaborate further.

“I will complete the reconfigurations.” Seven hesitates, apparently choosing her next words with care. “Perhaps you should take some rest.”

B’Elanna snatches the spanner back. She doesn’t want to stop working because that would mean she’d have to confront the Tom situation. “I’m going to finish this.” She turns back to the panel and is halfway through asking Seven for a report on the status of the power grid when all of a sudden, the inertial dampeners fail and Voyager starts to spin out of control. Or at least she assumes the dampeners have failed because she’s falling towards the floor. Seven catches her as effortlessly as she had caught the spanner. It turns out the inertial dampeners are just fine - she is simply faint from hunger.

“I believe that would be unwise.”

B’Elanna pushes away from the arm that supports her. “I am in command,” she asserted, petulantly.

“That is not in dispute, Lieutenant. However, you are also in need of sleep and nutrients.”

“How the hell would you know what I need?”

Seven cocks her head slightly to the side, like she is struggling to process her thoughts into speech. “The tricorder scan indicates that you are suffering from exhaustion and hunger. It is not efficient for you to continue working. I am able to complete this task.”

“Not efficient.” B’Elanna repeats, smiling so thinly that her lips practically disappear. With that single word, Seven becomes a legitimate target for B’Elanna’s ire. “I’ve not had enough sleep since you put us all on these  _ efficient _ shifts. I’m not like you- I can’t just plug myself in and recharge.”

“I am aware that you blame me for the shift system.”

“It’s your fault. I know you don’t need to eat, sleep or have a social life, but I do.”

Seven shows no sign of being unnerved by B’Elanna accusatory tone. “The Captain made the decision to implement a new system. I do not believe it is fair to hold me responsible for your insomnia, failure to remember to eat, or-” uncharacteristically she holds her tongue.

“Or what?”

Seven says nothing. If B’Elanna didn’t know better, she would think Seven was holding out on a piece of gossip. Seven shifts her weight from one foot to the other. B’Elanna has a bilious feeling that might merely be the sting of hunger, but something about Seven’s palpable unease makes her uncomfortable. Just then, the tricorder beeps out an alarm.

“The manifold is overloading,” Seven surmises calmly.

An overload would cause substantial damage to the power grid and had the potential to leave Voyager vulnerable. B’Elanna switches into her emergency engineering mode, and pushes her fatigue aside. “If we finish the reconfigurations, that should stabilise the power grid.” Her hands set deftly about the task. She pours all of her focus into steadying her fingers to make the intricate adjustments. “Status?”

“Overload in fifteen seconds.”

“One more to go,” she mutters under her breath. Fifteen seconds was cutting it fine; and with a couple of seconds to go she knows she isn’t going to get it done before the panel blows up. “Seven, get out of here!”

She can feel the panel getting hotter and hotter- the overload is imminent, but she must keep trying to avert it. She yelps in agony. Power surges through the panel, overheating the circuits. It burns her arm, the sickly-sweet smell of scalded flesh hangs pungent in the air. Seamlessly, Seven moves in front of her and takes over. Her Borg-enhanced hand moves in a blur. Seven wrings every last drop of time out of those few seconds. B’Elanna holds her breath. The beeping stops.

“You are injured.”

B’Elanna collapses onto the floor, drained and exhausted. The skin on her fingers has blackened and it peels away from her hand. The adrenaline rush recedes and she’s hit by the full force of the pain. Seven pulls the emergency medkit from the wall. She waves the dermal regenerator in an arcing motion back and forth over B’Elanna’s arm. The singed skin begins to heal and renew. Seven holds B’Elanna’s wrist, gently turning her arm to examine it. B’Elanna is surprised by how the cybernetic mesh attached to Seven’s hand feels against her skin; she would have expected the metal alloy to be cold, hard and unyielding, but it was none of those things. A few strands of hair had worked their way out of Seven’s austere blonde bun. They frame her face, highlighting the intensity of her gaze as she inspects the newly mended flesh.

“Are you in pain?” Seven asks, releasing the wrist she held.

B’Elanna flexes her fingers a few times. Dermal regeneration always caused a slight tingly sensation. She remembered from one of the mandatory classes at the Academy that regeneration promoted the accelerated repair of nerve endings, hence the tingling. She gingerly runs her other hand over the skin. “No. Thank you.”

“Would you like me to accompany you to Sick Bay?” Seven asks, after they had returned to Engineering. Crawling through the Jeffries Tube felt like it took an age and now B’Elanna’s body aches from the dual deprivations of sleep and hunger.

“I’m not sure a trip to The Doctor will make me feel any better,” B’Elanna says wryly.

“Standard protocol dictates that all crew should attend Sick Bay following a work-related accident.”

Was it possible that there was a slight twinkle in Seven’s eye? The Chief Engineer considered how many times she had pulled Seven up over breaches of  _ standard protocol _ . “Are you teasing me?”

“Borg do not tease.”

“Right.” B’Elanna finds that she enjoys this back and forth banter. “I could do with something to eat.”

“Very well. I will return to Astrometrics.”

"Wait." The overloading manifold must have shaken B’Elanna up a bit, because she doesn’t want to leave Seven’s company just yet. “You wanna come to the Mess?”


	3. Social Graces

The Turbolift hums as it carries them between decks. Usually, B’Elanna didn’t like being in such an enclosed space with the ex-Borg, but today was different.

“You know, you disobeyed a direct order back there,” Torres observes. “I told you to get out before the panel blew.”

Seven raises an eyebrow archly. “I apologise. I must have misheard.” Her tone is even enough to be almost convincing.

“I thought you had enhanced hearing.”

“No one is perfect,” Seven responds after a beat.

“You could have been hurt.” Torres rubs her hand. “Thank you,” she whispers.

By the time they get to the Mess, Neelix is all out of leola root creations. “I can whip something special up for you if you like?” he suggests enthusiastically.

“Don’t go to any trouble, I’ve got some rations to use.”

Truthfully, the thought of a  _ Neelix Special _ , however kindly intended, is completely unappealing. B’Elanna is so hungry that surely it should be easy to tell the computer what she wants, but standing in front of a replicator that can make anything her heart desires makes the choice extraordinarily difficult.

“This is not an easy decision?” Seven asks with curiosity.

“No. Ugh. Computer: steamed chicken, broccoli and rice, authorisation Torres-kappa-nine-alpha.”

Instead of conjuring a plate of food the replicator chirps sadly.  _ You have insufficient rations remaining. Replicator rations will be issued on Stardate 51240. _

“What?” She accesses the panel and reads the records. “French fries?” she spits in disgust. French fries, along with something called buffalo hot wings, had been replicated last night at a time when she knew she had been tossing and turning in bed.  _ Fucking Tom. He must have borrowed her rations and forgot to tell her. _ She could have cried.

“Use mine,” Seven says. “Computer: steamed chicken, broccoli and rice, authorisation Seven of Nine-gamma-three-pi.”

B’Elanna is pathetically grateful. Her eyes must communicate an unspoken question because Seven explains she has simply acted efficiently in donating rations. It feels more like kindness than efficiency to B’Elanna though. Not for the first time today, she suspects she has judged Seven unfairly. They sit together at a table.

Neelix wanders over from the galley kitchen area. “You look like you’ve had quite a day. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any wine back there do you?”

Neelix chuckles heartily. “No, but I do have a wonderful herbal tea.”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Seven, would you like some, too?”

B’Elanna is surprised and pleased when Seven says yes. She wonders if Seven drinks tea through preference now, or whether this is simply a social grace acquired through The Doctor’s lessons. Neelix returns with the tea and discreetly moves back into the galley.

“I didn’t know you had replicator rations.”

“I am a member of the crew,” Seven observes defensively. “All crew members are entitled to rations.”

“That’s not what I meant- of course you’re a member of the crew,” B’Elanna says, troubled by the idea that she has hurt Seven’s feelings. “Sorry. I guess what I meant was I’ve never seen you eat.”

Seven’s head tilts as if she was surprised to hear an apology, and her posture seems to loosen a bit. “You are correct. I do not need to ingest nutrients, and generally I do not choose to. However, The Doctor and the Captain have both suggested that I eat food on a regular basis to help me integrate with the crew. But I find it is difficult to decide what I want and I am not sure why eating would ingratiate me with others. How did you choose what to eat?”

“It’s nicer, I suppose- eating with someone,” B’Elanna muses, “or at least that’s the theory.” She cuts a small piece of chicken and chews it slowly, consciously stopping herself from wolfing the meal down. “My body was telling me I needed something nourishing. That’s how I chose.”

“I see. The universal translator was unable to decipher the growls coming from your stomach earlier.” B’Elanna can’t quite tell if this is deadpan but then the corner of Seven’s mouth twitches.

“Funny.” How has she missed Seven’s sense of humour for so long? It is bone-dry, but it is definitely there. And definitely funny.

Seven pours tea from the pot into two mugs. It has a pleasant aroma- slightly floral. Plumes of steam rise in elegant spirals. B’Elanna watches Seven copy her in raising a mug to her lips and blowing over the liquid to cool it before taking a sip.

“It’s nice,” the engineer said. She watches Seven let the liquid rest on her tongue for a moment before swallowing. “Do you like it?”

“I am not sure of what I like.”

“What did you like before? Before you were a Borg, I mean,” B’Elanna stumbles over the phrasing and winces apologetically.

Seven takes another sip. “When the Borg assimilate an individual, the overwhelming majority of memories are edited. Anything that is irrelevant is removed. This streamlines the amount of information added to the Collective.” She pauses, considering how to explain. “I can remember eating when I was a child. I remember that my parents balanced their plates on their knees while they analysed Borg data and I would sit at my desk with my plate. The plate had separate compartments. Each one contained a different food with a certain macronutrient profile. My mother told me that I had to eat the green items.” She blinks a couple of times as if trying to recall more detail. B’Elanna realises that this is the first time she can remember Seven talking to her about her pre-Borg life. Seven closes her eyes and sighed. “But I cannot remember different textures, tastes or why I liked or disliked a particular food.” Seven points at the broccoli and her nose crinkles. “This. I know I did not like it.”

B’Elanna tries to picture Seven as a rebellious kid who didn’t eat her greens. “Something we have in common.”

“You do not like broccoli?”

“There are things I prefer,” B’Elanna smiles ruefully. “My father told me I had to eat broccoli when I was a kid. My mom told me I had to eat blood pie. They said  _ it’s good for you _ \- I guess that’s the same thing as having a certain macronutrient profile.”

“I see. Then the things you like-”

“Aren’t good for me.” B’Elanna stabs her fork through a spear of broccoli. She tears the floret off with her teeth, chews and swallows. “My favourite thing is banana pancakes. My grandmother made them for me when I was a kid. She’d let me drizzle maple syrup on them in silly patterns, or sometimes we’d have them with ice cream. I don’t know if it’s the pancakes I like or those memories of being together with someone who just let me be me.” She trails off, wondering what had possessed her to be so open with Seven of Nine. She can see that Seven doesn’t quite understand. “My mom always wanted me to be more Klingon. My father always wanted me to be more human. The truth is, I’ve never felt like I was either. I must have been a constant disappointment to them,” she smiles but it doesn’t touch her eyes. “My grandma didn’t care though, she didn’t have expectations of how I was supposed to act, or what I was supposed to do. I could just be myself.”

Seven processes this information silently, while cradling the mug of tea. The only sound between them is the scrape of cutlery on the plate. “I believe my parents regretted my existence.”

B’Elanna swallows suddenly- she couldn’t have heard that right. “What?”

“Their work was inconvenienced by my presence. Their lives would have been easier without me.”

B’Elanna is stunned. If she had heard Seven say the exact same thing yesterday, she wouldn’t have noticed the tiny deviations in tone and facial expression- the things that made her a person, not a drone. Yesterday, B’Elanna realises with some shame, she wouldn’t have cared. Today feels different somehow. Seven had put herself at risk to protect her. Maybe the significance of that act is illusory and will be gone with the dawn, but in this moment, B’Elanna feels a genuine connection. “You can’t possibly think that. It’s not true.”

Seven looks at her quizzically. “How could you know what my parents thought?”

“Well, I guess I don’t know what they thought.” Until right now, she hadn’t spent any time wondering what the Hansen family was like before they were all assimilated into the Collective. She knows she can’t give Seven an evidence-based rebuttal, but she might be able to give her a different emotional perspective. Without thinking, she reaches across and squeezes Seven’s forearm. “Parents love their children. They don’t regret them. Sometimes they make mistakes. Mine did. Maybe yours did too.”

“Not all parents love their children. Icheb’s parents converted him into a weapon; a tool they were prepared to sacrifice,” Seven notes coolly, but makes no movement to withdraw from B’Elanna’s touch. “There is evidence that my parents loved their work. I do not know that there is evidence that they loved me.” Her eyes cast downwards, fixing on the half-empty cup of tea.

For all the physical strength B’Elanna can feel rippling beneath the biosuit, there was an emotional vulnerability to Seven that she’d never appreciated before. She thinks about her own complex feelings about her parents. Her father abandoned her and her mother when she was just a kid. In the years since, she’d often wondered whether her birth had inconvenienced their love affair, whether her arrival into the universe encumbered her parents with a sense of duty to stay together, and whether they resented her presence on some level. “If you don’t have evidence either way, isn’t it better to trust that they did love you than torture yourself that they didn’t?”

Seven looks up from the mug and holds her gaze. “I had not considered that before.” Her blue eyes look like they are searching for something. Searching for something and finding it, perhaps.

Something has changed, B’Elanna thinks. Seven is no longer the colleague she barely tolerates and interacts with under sufferance. Maybe resistance was indeed futile. Neelix comes back to their table to clear away the plate. Self-consciously, B’Elanna withdraws her hand from Seven’s arm. She doesn’t want to leave just yet, but can’t think of a compelling reason to stay.

“Can I get you anything else?” Neelix asked.

“I don’t think so, thanks Neelix,” B’Elanna sighs, mustering the energy to go to Sick Bay.

“Actually,” Seven interjects, “I would like two forks.” She gets up and walks to the replicator and returns, to her companion’s surprise, with a stack of banana pancakes and ice cream. “Naomi Wildman says that desserts are good after a hard day,” she offers in response to B’Elanna’s bemused smile. “Are these pancakes satisfactory?”

“Yeah.” B’Elanna uses the side of the fork to separate a piece of pancake, impaling it and a round of banana on the tines. “That’s good,” she says, licking the sugary sweetness from her lips. “You have to try some.”

Seven copies the method B’Elanna had used to construct a forkload of pancake and banana. For good measure, she swirls it into the ice cream before putting it into her mouth. A note of pleasure escapes Seven’s lips. Her blue eyes shine with the excitement of a little kid tasting their first candy bar, which actually wasn’t too far from the mark.

B’Elanna catches herself taking pleasure from watching Seven’s reaction. “How’s the macronutrient profile?”

“Heavily imbalanced and weighted towards simple saccharides and carbohydrates,” Seven analyses. “I like it,” she adds, flashing B’Elanna a genuine smile.

The stack of pancakes gets demolished. One last satisfying bite’s worth remained. “Finish them,” B’Elanna says, gallantly.

Seven smushes the remnants of pancake and banana together, now saturated with melted ice cream. She holds out the fork for her companion. “You finish them; they make you happy.”

B’Elanna presumes that Seven does not know that such a gesture could be perceived as an intimate one in most human cultures. She takes it as another of the acts of kindness Seven has bestowed on her. She leans forward and lets Seven feed her the last mouthful. Tom wouldn’t have given up the last of his pancakes, she muses.

“Sick Bay?” Seven prods.

“You’re not going to let that slide, huh?”


	4. Confessions

B’Elanna finds herself milling through the corridors after another long shift. Restless, she hopes wandering aimlessly about the ship will burn off some energy. She’s been a bundle of combustible energy ever since she spotted Tom grinning and flirting with Jenny Delaney. To make it worse, she still hadn’t synced up shifts with Tom, so she still hasn’t talked to him about it, but it is starting to affect the rest of her life- she’s chewed out her Engineering crew more than once today.

Everytime she tells herself that everything’s fine, the nagging feeling that lurks in the back of her mind rears its head. Something is amiss, but she doesn’t want to accept it. So, a nice long walkabout the decks was definitely better than sitting and stewing in her quarters. She’s not following any particular path when she realises she has arrived at the entrance to Cargo Bay Two. She wonders if she’s hungry because all of a sudden, there’s a fluttery feeling in her stomach.

In addition to storing cargo, Cargo Bay Two served as the quarters for the ex-Borg members of the crew- Seven and Icheb. B’Elanna is not entirely sure why her feet have taken her here, and thinks about continuing her walk about the ship, but she gets close enough to the entrance for the door sensors to detect her. The sensor presumes she wants entry because the big double doors slide open with a satisfying click, inviting her into the cavernous hold. She finds herself drawn inwards, her eyes adjusting to the gloomier light level. Seven is working at a console near her regeneration alcove. Another click and the doors slide open behind her. Two members of Security, Ensign Lang and Crewman Chell saunter in, apparently on one of the additional security patrols. As a first line of defence against Borg invasion, B’Elanna is somewhat underwhelmed by the potential resistance these two might offer.

“Just checking for Borg intruders,” Lang says. Chell grasps his phaser rifle stagily.

“Coast is clear,” B’Elanna replies, indignant at their presence. This is, for all intents and purposes, the quarters of Seven and Icheb. No other crew member’s quarters would be entered without permission of the occupant. With some discomfort, she realises she too had entered unannounced on a private space. Why hadn’t she ever seen it that way before now?

“Well, I see a Borg,” Chell mutters sarcastically.

“Dismissed,” B’Elanna says brusquely. She approaches Seven, who seems to be concentrating on something and either oblivious to the intrusion or so habituated to them that she has not looked up. The latter thought leaves B’Elanna feeling uneasy. “Seven?”

“Lieutenant. Is something wrong?”

“No. Are you busy working? Am I disturbing you?”

Seven cocks her head slightly to the side in the way that she did whenever she was weighing exactly what was being asked. “I was busy, but not with work. I am not disturbed,” she responds to each component in turn.

B’Elanna is surprised by Seven again because she assumed that regeneration and work was pretty much the sum of her existence. Intrigued, she asks, “What were you doing?”

“I was selecting which musical pieces to play while I am regenerating.”

“You were making a playlist?” B’Elanna asks incredulously. “What’s on it?”

“The Doctor has recommended a number of human operatic works to aid my musical education. I have selected La bohème, from the nineteenth century, for my next regeneration cycle.”

“What’s it about?”

“A doomed love affair, like most of The Doctor’s favourite works are.”

Seven presses a button on the console and music pipes through the Cargo Bay. A man and a woman sing passionately. B’Elanna isn’t sure what they are singing about exactly, but she is carried along by the music, which is as tragic and romantic as any of the klingon works her mother had played for her as a child. When it came to a close, her voice had thickened with emotion. “That was beautiful.”

“It is the final duet of Rodolfo and Mimi. They reminisce about their love before she dies.”

“A happy ending, then.”

“It seems to me that humans measure a love affair by how tragic its end is.”

“You might be right,” B’Elanna chuckles.

“Was there something that you required?”

B’Elanna is momentarily confused, but then she realises Seven is asking what her purpose for being there is. “Er, I realised I didn’t say thank you properly for saving my life and then getting dinner the other day.” Her insides feel fluttery again, suddenly. “And I wondered if you’d like to do it again sometime?” Out loud, it sounds like she’s inviting her on a date.

Seven appears to weigh the prospect carefully, and B’Elanna thinks she is about to decline, when Seven replies, “I would.”

“Great,” B’Elanna says, and she’s surprised that she really means it. “I’ll get the next round of pancakes, or whatever you like. Well, as soon as Tom pays me my rations back.” She stresses his name in the sentence.

“Ensign Paris stole your rations?” Seven asks judgmentally.

“Borrowed,” corrects B’Elanna.

“Is there a distinction between borrowing without asking and stealing?”

“In a relationship, I guess people take more liberties.” B’Elanna shrugs half-heartedly. “It’s give and take.”

“I see,” Seven says sharply. “I would have thought one would take fewer liberties with their romantic partner.”

B’Elanna’s brow furrows. She doesn’t understand the iciness of Seven’s tone. “Why does this bother you?”

Seven doesn’t reply, but it seems pretty obvious she’s wrestling with some sort of dilemma.

“Is something wrong?”

“I do not wish to upset you.”

“It’ll upset me if you keep hinting at something without telling me. Just say what’s on your mind.” She takes a step closer and adds, “Please.”

Seven takes an audible breath in, steadying herself to the task. “Few of the crew realise that I am aware of my environment when I am regenerating.”

“Aware of your environment? Like you can hear people?”

“Yes. I close my eyes during regeneration, but all of my other senses function as they do while I am conscious.”

“Huh.” B’Elanna ran through the times she’d been in the cargo bay while Seven had been regenerating. She winces when she remembers making one particularly demeaning remark, but knows there were probably others she’s made too. “I’m sorry for the things I’ve said.”

“That is not why I am telling you this. I am accustomed to the casual cruelty and intolerance of the crew. It is irrelevant.”

_ Casual cruelty. _ That one phrase hits home and B’Elanna is disgusted with herself. “It isn’t irrelevant. You deserve better. I’m ashamed and I hope you can forgive me.”

Seven dips her head in acknowledgment. “Lieutenant, please, I do not know how to say this. The cargo bay is a hub of irrelevant chatter. The crew seem to gravitate here to have all manner of clandestine communications.”

“You mean gossip.”

“Yes. Ordinarily I dismiss these conversations. But I have heard gossip that involves you, and I believe you would want to know,” Seven says. Her eyes meet B’Elanna’s with an uncharacteristic lack of confidence.

“Well, you have to tell me now,” B’Elanna says, steeling herself for whatever it might be, but her stomach is already churning, because deep down she already knows what Seven is going to say.

“It will be easier if I replay it.”

“Replay?”

“My vocal processors allow me to mimic others; I can precisely reproduce the conversation.”

Seven’s voice modulates into a conversation between Jenny and Megan Delaney. At first, B’Elanna gasps at how perfectly Seven is able to rehearse their voices, and then she gasps at what Jenny guiltily confessed to her twin. The crux of the sisterly confession was that Tom and Jenny had sex in the holodeck after bowling one night. Jenny confided to her sister that Tom said he was going to break up with B’Elanna.

“I am sorry,” Seven says in her normal voice, not without compassion.

“When did you hear this?” When Seven relayed the exact stardate and time B’Elanna slotted it into the night that Tom didn’t come to bed. “Does anyone else know?”

“I do not know. I have not discussed this with anyone.”

At least her humiliation was reasonably contained, B’Elanna thinks. Harry couldn’t have known either- a secret of that size would have been written all over his face. She paces up and down the cargo bay. Her anger is burning white-hot, but she can’t pin down which element of this sordid tale hurts her the most. Was it the ease with which Tom had lied to her face, or that in a contest between her and Jenny Delaney she came in a distant second, or the fact that a couple of years ago she was the gossip queen of Voyager- privy to all the personal goings on on the ship? And then it hits her- she is going to be alone again. However lacking and imperfect her relationship with Tom had been, at least she had had someone to go home to, someone to stave off the crushing loneliness of the Delta Quadrant with. And suddenly she’s howling in pain, sinking towards the floor, hoping it will swallow her whole.

For the second time, Seven catches her before she can fall too far. She cries into the sleeve of Seven’s biosuit, making a salty anguished mess. “Why did you tell me this?” she chokes out amongst sobs.

“Based on all of my observations of you, I concluded that you would want to know,” Seven pauses and adds quietly, “you deserve to know.”

B’Elanna lets herself be held for a while. She’s sort of half-curled into Seven’s frame and it’s quite clear from how tense the Borg’s body is that she is unaccustomed to providing physical comfort. It’s sincere and awkward all at once, and B’Elanna clings to her tightly. Eventually her sobs turn into hiccups and finally her breathing evens out. She wipes her eyes with the cuff of her uniform jacket. Tears stain her cheeks.

“I’m sorry about your outfit,” B’Elanna mumbles, trying to wipe Seven’s biosuit dry.

“How are you feeling?”

B’Elanna’s instinct is to laugh mirthlessly- surely the answer is obvious even to Seven. But then she realises that Seven has only had The Doctor as a social guide, so of course she only has anodyne platitudes to rely on even for this type of conversation.

“I never kidded myself that there’d be any operas dedicated to the love affair of Tom and B’Elanna,” she says, and then tries to explain in a way that Seven will understand. “Before I got into a relationship with Tom, I was lonely out here. I think that’s why we got together- we were just two lonely people. I’ve never been under the illusion that we’re soulmates. But this still hurts.”

“I am sorry.” Seven squeezes her arm gently- just like B’Elanna had done in the Mess Hall. “What is a soulmate?”

The question throws B’Elanna. She opens her mouth, closes it again, and bites her lip thoughtfully. “It’s the one person in the universe that you connect with more than anyone else. Someone who understands you, who accepts you.”

“Like your grandmother?”

“My grandmother?”

“You said she placed no expectation on you to be like a human or like a klingon. That you could simply be yourself.”

B’Elanna is taken aback that Seven had deemed that part of their conversation relevant enough to remember. It was another contrast with Tom, who hadn’t ever really asked about her family. “You know, I never thought of her like that, but yeah.”

There’s a silence before Seven asks, “Can there be only one?”

“Only one what?” B’Elanna asks, not following.

“Soulmate. Can a person have more than one?”

B’Elanna regards Seven closely, her hearts are beating faster for some reason. “I don’t see why not. I guess it’s just unusual to even find one.”

“I see,” Seven says, apparently filing away this conversation to digest later. “What will you do?”

“What will I do?” B’Elanna echoes, for some reason she keeps losing the thread of the conversation.

“About Tom,” Seven presses gently.

B’Elanna barks out a laugh. “Probably something I’ll regret.”


	5. Break-up

B’Elanna is in her quarters. She’s been stewing for a while now, thinking over every time Tom has deflected a question or changed the subject, or come home late after a shift. How many times has he lied to her? And how had it been so easy for him? When had this dalliance with Jenny Delaney started? The small hairs on the back of her neck stand erect. A cascade of emotions has erupted within her- anger chiefly among them- and is now coalescing into a febrile ball. He’ll be back soon. She sinks into the couch, clawing into the fabric.

Any thought she might have had of playing it cool flies out the window as soon as Tom walks through the door.

“You wanna tell me about Jenny?” she demands.

Tom swallows nervously. His mouth opens and closes a few times like a fish before he actually speaks. “What do you mean?”

“You fucked her. You are fucking her.”

“Ah, who said that?”

“Who said that?” She springs up from the couch. “No denial?” She is circling him now, her body taut and aggressive. Tom doesn’t answer, but his eyes dart back and forth nervously and his pupils dilate, blooming with a surge of adrenaline as his body prepares to fight or flight.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“It was an accident, okay. I’m sorry,” he stammers.

“An accident!” B’Elanna repeats incredulously. “What was the accident- she tripped while  _ bowling  _ and landed on your penis?”

Tom doesn’t respond.

“Why did you lie to me? Making out like you were out all the time to help Harry? Do you think I’m stupid?”

“B’Elanna, please. Calm down,” he says weakly, his hands raised as if to calm her. It may as well have been a red rag to a bull.

“Calm down?” she repeats, her voice raising that much higher. “You must have fucked her for a reason. What was it?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles. He backs out of the door, back into the corridor. Flight it was.

She pursues him, needling him all the while. “She’s hotter than me? More fuckable? Smarter than me? Not as smart as me? What is it about Jenny fucking Delaney? Tell me, I really wanna know.”

Tom is now trotting to try and put some distance between him and B’Elanna, but she easily keeps pace with him. Members of the crew instinctively get out of their way, flattening their backs against the walls, their heads on swivels as they watch the breakup carnival roll on.

He breaks into a jog and heads for the Mess Hall. He must have calculated that B’Elanna won’t create too much of a scene in front of the rest of the ship. He’s wrong.

Most of the senior staff are there eating dinner; the Mess is bustling with activity since near enough everyone is saving their personal replicator rations. Janeway and Chakotay are huddled together on a side table, poring over reports with a big cafetière of coffee between them. Their presence doesn’t give B’Elanna a moment’s pause.

“Why? Why’d you do this to me? Why didn’t you have the courage to be honest?” Her voice comes out more shrill than she wants it to, but she stands her ground, hands on hips.

Resigned, with nowhere else to go, Tom finally stops running. “Do we have to do this here and now?”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she says caustically. “Is this inconvenient for you?” She’s aware that everyone has stopped whatever they were doing to watch them, and she doesn’t care. Her pride is wounded and it demands revenge.

“We- we don’t have to be so public,” Tom says, strangling his words so they come out as a hiss beneath his breath.

“I promise this will be the last time, darling,” she sneers. “Tell me why you’ve been fucking someone else behind my back, and it’ll all be over.”

A death silence has come over the Mess Hall. It’s like time has frozen for some of them. Neelix is stock-still while in the middle of ladling soup into a bowl. Janeway and Chakotay stand up. B’Elanna catches the thunderous look on the Captain’s face. Chakotay is staring daggers at Tom.

Tom hangs his head in his hands for a minute. When he looks up, the colour has drained from his skin. “I know you probably won’t believe me, but I didn’t mean for it to happen. It wasn’t planned.”

“But it did happen and you didn’t tell me and then it happened again. It’s still happening, isn’t it?”

“Fine. If you really wanna know the truth, it’s just easier with her, okay. Even you have to admit that.”

“What does that mean, ‘it’s easier’?”

“This!” He gestures between them. “You’re impossible; you’re moody, you’re angry, you don’t like fun. Life’s too short. Sometimes, I just wanna have a good time.”

And there it is. Tom wants the “easier” life- the one without her in it. It was the exact same words her father had said when he left her mother. Not even being flung seventy-thousand light years across the galaxy was far enough to avoid treading the same path her parents had made. She doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or upend all the tables. Janeway is beside her and Chakotay has positioned himself near Tom, just in case she flies at him in a rage, she assumes. She’s not going to give Tom the satisfaction of proving him right about her anger issues.

“I’m okay,” she says to her Captain quietly. “We’re done.”

To say the air in the briefing room could be cut with a knife is an understatement of epic proportion. It’s two days after B’Elanna had broken up with Tom. They hadn’t seen each other since the Mess Hall. She’d moved out of their quarters right away- they felt more like his quarters anyway. For the time being she was staying in the small quarters normally reserved for the occasional guests to Voyager. Tom looks dishevelled; his uniform creased and the dark circles under his eyes betrayed a lack of sleep. His apparent suffering is oddly pleasing to B’Elanna. Strangely, the last couple of nights had been among the most restful she’d had lately. She’d bawled her eyes out on the first night; her tears of anger and humiliation running hot down her cheeks. But it had been cleansing and when she awoke the first day after, she felt renewed. But the aftermath of a break-up is never linear, and since then she’s been vacillating between pretending not to care at all and struggling to come to terms with the fact she was alone again.

Janeway begins the meeting with a preamble. “I know emotions are running high. But I also know that whatever our differences we will be able to pull together to keep Voyager safe.” She shoots meaningful glances towards both the helmsman who sat slumped in his chair and Torres. “Anyone have anything to report?”

Seven raises her hand. “Lieutenant Torres and I have made substantial upgrades to the Astrometrics sensors.”

“That was your work, Seven.” B’Elanna says a little gruffly. She doesn’t need anyone’s pity. She hasn’t spoken to Seven since she had revealed Tom’s infidelity, either.

“We made the reconfigurations together,” Seven points out in support of her original statement. “With the increase in range and resolution I have detected a functional transwarp coil drifting among debris.”

“A transwarp coil; is that compatible with Voyager’s systems?”

“It would require extensive modification,” Seven acknowledges, “however I believe that Lieutenant Torres and I could integrate it into the ship’s systems.”

“It would get us pretty far,” B’Elanna jumps in, glad to have a focus on something other than her sullen ex-boyfriend.

“What happened to the Borg ship it came from?”

“The volume of debris is consistent with a Borg cube. I am uncertain as to how or why the cube was destroyed.”

Janeway has her elbows on the table. With her chin resting on her hands she ponders aloud, “Why haven’t the Borg picked it up? It’s not like them to leave technology lying around.”

Seven turns the presentation screen on to illustrate her hypothesis. “The debris field is dense and extensive. Borg vessels would likely take damage in trying to manoeuvre through it. They may have assessed the cost of recovery outweighs the benefit. Voyager is also too large to safely navigate the space.”

“Delta Flyer?”

“It is sufficiently small to traverse the debris field. However, preliminary readings from the long-range scans indicate high levels of ionising radiation are present, which would limit the Flyer to thrusters.”

Janeway sits back in her chair, weighing the risks. “This would cut the journey time to the Alpha Quadrant down, by a large margin. But do we want to leave Voyager hanging around in Borg space while the Flyer goes on a scavenger hunt? Thoughts.”

“I can pilot the Flyer through that,” Tom volunteers, his voice quiet with shame.

“Do you even know what a transwarp coil looks like?” B’Elanna asks with more than a shade of passive-aggression.

Janeway interjects quickly, sensing the potential for escalation. “Do you have a proposal, B’Elanna?”

“I can do it myself. Pilot the Flyer and grab the coil.” It’s a reckless idea to go alone, and she knows it.

“You can’t fly through that,” Tom says, incredulously. And it was probably true- B’Elanna was no slouch, but she wasn’t the most experienced pilot and far from the best on the ship.

“You wanna tell me what I can and can’t do?” B’Elanna asks through a smile that is anything but friendly.

“It would be prudent to have a second member of the away team,” Tuvok interjects with unflappable logic.

“Yes it would,” replied Chakotay.

“I volunteer.” Everyone looks at Seven because she has never freely volunteered to work with B’Elanna before. “I have the most experience with transwarp technology and I am a competent pilot. It is the logical choice.”

Tuvok nods in approval. Janeway glances at Chakotay for his agreement.

“Fine, Seven and B’Elanna, you’ll be in the Flyer.”

“The radiation will likely adversely affect all of the Flyer’s systems. If the shields fail, it will present a risk to Seven and Lieutenant Torres,” Tuvok offers a tactical assessment.

“I’ll prepare some anti-radiation hyposprays,” The Doctor says. “These will give some protection against the effects of the radiation, but not total immunity.”

“Understood.”

“Harry, I want you to constantly monitor for any Borg ships entering the sector. I want to be alerted to any vessels that might be on an intercept course with this coil.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Tom, Voyager’s going to be parked while we wait for the Flyer. Any suggestions for how we avoid attracting too much attention?”

“I can slide us up as close as I can to the debris field. If we cut main power, the radiation might disguise us on sensors.”

“Won’t the radiation be a problem if we’ve got no shields?” Chakotay asks.

“I’ll inoculate the crew with the radiation antidote too. That should increase the length of time the crew can be safely exposed,” The Doctor responds.

“You all know what to do. Let’s get it done,” Janeway commands.

The Delta Flyer is a small space for B’Elanna to be sharing with anyone when she’s in the frame of mind she’s in. The whole episode had been humiliating. It isn’t Seven’s fault that Tom fucked around on her, but she’d much prefer to be alone right now and certainly not with the woman who told her her world was going to come crashing down around her. It is the first time they’ve been alone since B’Elanna had cried into her sleeve, and it's hard for B'Elanna to pin down how she feels towards Seven just now. She's both grateful and resentful for the truth. That ambivalence has meant she hasn’t been avoiding Seven, exactly, but she hasn’t made any adjustments to her routine that would have led to their paths crossing, either.

They wait for authorisation to launch, the silence growing louder and louder. When it gets too much for B’Elanna, she initiates yet another run through all the ready-checks, reciprocally confirming each system is online and functioning. Seven obeys protocol precisely and doesn’t attempt to strike up any non-essential conversation.

A klaxon blares out, heralding the shuttle bay doors opening. The doors slide apart to reveal the vastness of space filtered through the blue glow of the containment field across the bay. They are about to launch into the debris field in a tiny little craft. B’Elanna can see with her own eyes how dense the field is- it’s intimidating to think they’ll be navigating through it. The pieces of twisted metal range from a few centimetres to hundreds of metres in length. The largest chunks that dwarf the Flyer are recognisably of Borg design. But it is the smallest shards of splintered hull that will pose the greatest danger- they would be striking the Flyer continuously, like hailstones over time weakening the structural integrity of the craft.

“Delta Flyer, you are cleared for launch. Good luck,” Ensign Kim transmits.

The containment field disappears. Seven sets the launch sequence and the ship glides out of Voyager’s belly like it is being birthed into the stars.

“Thrusters at one-quarter, pitch at twenty degrees,” Seven reports.

“Shields holding at ninety percent. Radiation within safe levels.”

“Port thruster at one-half,” Seven relays as she manoeuvres around an object. Each adjustment would have to be perfect if they were to get through this in one piece.

“Voyager has gone dark,” B’Elanna reports, unease under-girding her voice. “Minimal power signature, and they’ve aligned their attitude with the field. We’re on our own for now.”

The minutes tick by in this heightened state. The tension crackles like electricity for B’Elanna who could feel perspiration forming on her brow. She glances at Seven who is a vision of serenity by comparison.

“Shields down to sixty-four percent. Microfractures forming on the starboard hull. Structural integrity holding.” Concerned about the shields dropping further, which would allow radiation to seep in, B’Elanna takes a hypospray and loads an anti-radiation ampoule. She needs to keep busy; success of the mission is in Seven’s hands for now. “I’m going to give you The Doctor’s radiation shot, okay?” With the faintest of trembles, she presses the hypospray to Seven’s neck. It discharges with a hiss. She repeats the process on herself.

After an eternity, they reach a huge piece of debris. “We are approaching the location of the coil. The section appears substantially intact.”

“Any life support still functioning over there?”

Seven shakes her head. “Not sufficient to sustain life. Artificial gravity is inactive.”

“We’ll need to go in in environmental suits. Have you got exact coordinates?”

“I have located a suitable beam-in site. I will boost the transporter confinement beam to compensate for the radiation.”

Environmental suits are unwieldy. Their purpose is to enable a humanoid to survive in an otherwise lethal environment, but B’Elanna wonders whether it might have been possible to design a survival suit that didn’t make her look like a marshmallow. Of course Seven manages to look elegant and statuesque in the damn thing. Cocooned in the big white suit, Torres sets the transporter controls and then stands on the pad next to Seven, who had been holding her helmet. Seven puts her helmet on for her, locking it securely into place.

“We will be okay,” Seven reassures gently, the first non-essential conversation they’ve had, as the energise sequence begins.

Their molecules rematerialise on what had once been a chamber on the Borg ship. Magnetic boots were clicked on to compensate for the low gravity. B’Elanna uses her torch to inspect their surroundings. Each bulkhead has three alcoves- just like the ones in Voyager’s cargo bay- recessed into them. They were all empty and offline. B’Elanna starts when a prosthetic arm floats past her- must have belonged to a drone who blew apart when the section decompressed into space.

“This is unusual,” Seven says. “I am not reading weapons signatures, or other energy residuals. I am not sure why this cube imploded.”

“Borg cubes don’t spontaneously self-destruct, do they?”

“It is not a frequently chosen action of the Collective, no,” Seven notes drily. “The transwarp coil is this way.”

They enter a smaller antechamber. The coil is apparently undamaged, still in its housing, fully integrated into the circuitry of the ship.

“Radiation levels in this compartment are interfering with the tricorder,” Seven says. “I cannot assess the functionality of the coil.”

“Great. Any ideas how we get it out of there?”

“We could use the transporter.”

“We can’t get a positive lock with this much radiation. And we can’t stay here too long. I’m not sure how much I trust The Doctor’s magic spray.”

“We could boost the annular confinement beam and narrow the targeting scanners,” Seven suggests.

“Good idea.”

Seven networks her tricorder with the computer on the Flyer to make the adjustments.

B’Elanna hates every second in this pitch-black tomb. Her imagination conjures up eyes in the shadows. A shiver runs up her spine and she flails her arm around to shine a light into the corners of the chamber. “It feels like we’re being watched.”

“I am not detecting any life signs on the tricorder,” Seven replies. “I have made the adjustments to the targeting parameters. Ready to transport the coil.”

They were like cat burglars pulling off a brilliant heist, B’Elanna thinks. “This was just too damned easy. Energise.” The coil twinkles as it dematerialises.

No sooner had the coil been beamed out than a sound echoed through the chamber. And then another. It sounds to B’Elanna like footfalls. “Do you hear that?”

“I recommend we return to the beam-out site.”

“Agreed.”

It was only fifteen metres, but when each step required the boots to magnetise and demagnetise, they may as well have been trying to run through quicksand. They’re nearly at the beam-out coordinates when three figures round the corner ahead of them. B’Elanna’s first thought is that these are Borg, here to recover their technology. She draws her phaser. The figures are clad in dark suits that look similar in design to their own. They are wearing helmets with visors that obscure their faces. Each helmet has a torch that emits a bright beam. It dazzles B’Elanna, even through her visor. Two of the three had a weapon drawn. The one on the left was carrying a different device, probably some type of scanner.

“You … not … Borg,” one says. The universal translator garbles some of the words. It was reasonable to suppose that this being was the leader.

“No. We are from the Starship Voyager. We mean you no harm. My name is Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres,” B’Elanna says, keeping her hands clearly visible, and her phaser pointed away from the aliens. She feels temperamentally unfit for first contact at the best of times, and this could scarcely be described as the best of times.

“Why ... taken ... coil, Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres?”

“We’re just trying to cross Borg space as quickly as possible.”

The being on the left who has the scanning device suddenly becomes agitated. “Raan … Borg!” The universal translator struggled to process the high-pitched, rapid clicking sounds of the aliens’ language that followed, but B’Elanna understands from their body language that they are afraid of Seven and panicking.

“No, she was severed from the Borg, she is no longer a Borg! Not Borg! Not Borg!” Even as she explained, time felt like it was slowing down. The one called Raan points a weapon at Seven. B’Elanna takes a split-second decision to demagnetise both her boots and push off the floor. It works. Aided by the low gravity, she glides in mid-air in front of Seven. Her momentum causes her body to rotate bringing her face to face with her shipmate. An energy discharge from the alien’s weapon strikes the back of her neck. It makes a loud cracking sound like she’d been hit with a whip. Her spine arches in agony. Stunned horror is painted on Seven’s face. And then everything goes black.


	6. Hope

Seven pulls the prone engineer around the bulkhead. “Emergency transport,” she yells. She tears off her environmental suit as soon as she rematerialises on the Flyer. She kneels beside Torres to render whatever aid she can. B’Elanna is her first priority- everything else- the aliens, the radiation, the hunks of metal drifting by is going to have to wait. The engineer is unconscious and convulsing, white foam bubbles out of her mouth and smears the glass on the inside of her helmet. Seven pulls the helmet off with one hand and locates the medkit with the other. Whatever weapon had caused this damage was not known to Starfleet’s medical tricorder library. She loads hyposprays with all the drugs that were indicated for the symptoms- she could treat those if not the underlying cause- B’Elanna grows still. She needs treatment in Sickbay. Seven was going to have to get them back to Voyager, alone.

“Seven of Nine to Voyager, come in,” she hails. No response. She assumes the radiation in the debris field is blocking the communication. She has to get back across the debris field. “Computer, set hail to continuous repeat, all frequencies.”

It had taken twenty three minutes to cross the debris field to get to the transwarp coil. Seven knows it is unlikely that she has twenty three minutes to get B’Elanna back to Voyager before- before-. She can’t think about that now. She sets the thrusters to full- maximum velocity but minimum reaction time to make course corrections to avoid collisions. She will need every one of her Borg enhancements to get through in one piece. For just a brief moment, she is glad she was assimilated, if that fact means B’Elanna might survive. “I am here, Lieutenant, hold on.”

The computer alerts her to the weakening of the shields. Any further erosion of shield strength and the microfractures threaten to turn into macrofractures at which point the ship could very well blow itself apart. They are still not clear of the debris and B’Elanna’s breaths have become thready. If she had been a Starfleet officer, her training would guide her to bolstering the shields with whatever power she could spare- better to save one crewmember than lose both. But Seven was not Starfleet. “Computer divert all available power, including auxiliary life support to the engines.”

“Delta Flyer, come in,” Janeway’s voice came through in a static-ridden transmission.

“Captain, we encountered a hostile species. The aliens opened fire with some type of energy weapon. Lieutenant Torres was seriously injured in this attack. She is unconscious. I am attempting to return to Voyager, however, I recommend that you beam her to Sickbay as soon as you can get a lock.”

“Harry?”

“The radiation interference is too great; I’m working on it.”

Seven kneels by the stricken body of B’Elanna. The energy blast had shot out the synapses in B’Elanna’s neocortex resulting in the cascade failure of her bodily functions. She was clinging to life, but just barely. The medkit was empty. Seven can’t bear to deal with this alone; a single individual watching a life slip away, powerless to prevent the loss.

In the Collective, drones ceased to exist as corporeal beings all the time- they were deactivated, or destroyed, or even cannibalised for their parts to make better drones- but their memories and experiences lived in the hive mind in perpetuity. As a drone, Seven had been inured to the loss of other drones because they were not really lost; their essence lived on in her. Even before being assimilated, Annika Hansen was naive to death. Back then, that little girl had never known anyone who had died. All her grandparents were living happy, healthy lives on Earth. She could not recall now whether that little girl had ever even understood the concept of death.

The person she knew as B’Elanna was disappearing before her eyes. Her face was being drained of its colour and its expression was unrecognisable- contorted into a rictus grin. If B’Elanna died here and now, then Voyager would lose her distinctiveness forever. That was what it meant to die. Seven, for reasons she could not understand, was overwhelmed by helplessness. From somewhere deep in the recesses of her memories, she remembered being comforted when she was scared and alone. Perhaps it was not even her own memory. Perhaps it was just one that had washed over her when she was a part of the hive mind. Instinctively, she holds B’Elanna’s hand between her own and sings a lullaby to her. Maybe it is simply a trick of her mind, but it appears to her that B’Elanna relaxes just slightly. Seven smooths B’Elanna’s hair as she sings. It occurs to her that these gestures of comfort are futile, empty of practical benefit, and yet they feel of vital significance.

She sees the assimilation tubules on her left hand. They are still functional. A germ of an idea takes root. She hails Voyager urgently. “Seven to Janeway!”

“We’re still working on the transporter, how’s B’Elanna?”

“She is dying.” The unvarnished truth draws gasps from the Bridge crew that are audible over the channel. “Captain, I can assimilate her.”

“She wouldn’t want that!” Tom shouts an interruption, his voice laden with shock.

Janeway ignores Tom’s outburst. “Seven, how will that help?”

“Her neural pathways are damaged and degrading. She is not responding to any drugs. Assimilating her is the only option to halt the damage.” Seven hears the thready breathing of her companion is shallowing, and knows that she is fading. “We are running out of time. You must decide quickly.”

“Are there any risks to you?”

“Unclear. She was injured because she protected me. I am prepared to take the risk.”

Nobody envies the decision Janeway must make now. She holds the lives of two crewmembers in her hands. If she waits for the transporter, B’Elanna will die. If she orders Seven to assimilate B’Elanna, she could lose them both. That’s the risk and the fear. But the hope is that B’Elanna might live. And it’s hope, not fear, that has propelled Voyager thousands of light years towards home against the odds. And it’s hope that Janeway relies on now. “Do it.”

The tubules extend from the top of Seven’s wrist. Snake-like they weave towards the soft tissue of B’Elanna’s neck and puncture the skin, forming a conduit between them. Hundreds of thousands of nanoprobes flow from Seven’s body into B’Elanna’s. When nanoprobes find themselves in a new host, they fan out through the body, sailing through the blood and lymph systems like explorers. At first, they undertake an inventory of the body they have been injected into. Once the nanoprobes have established whether any biological systems have been damaged, they flood those tissues en masse and work collectively to patch the damage; sometimes by triggering the expression of genes encoding repair proteins, sometimes by building cybernetic implants.

The assimilation is taking hold; B’Elanna’s complexion takes on the grey pallor of a Borg drone. An implant erupts along her forearm. Her chest rises and falls with greater purpose. Seven scans the internal changes with the tricorder. Relief washes over her because the collapse of neural pathways has slowed. There was a chance still.


	7. Collision

The Doctor, Janeway, and Seven stand anxiously over B’Elanna who lies peacefully on the biobed. She isn’t getting better, but neither is she getting worse.

“Doctor, status?”

“The injuries caused by the energy weapon were extensive. Her neural pathways are suffering a cascade failure. The nanoprobes are stimulating the healing process, but there simply aren’t enough of them to keep up.” The Doctor’s voice is rising in pitch. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s like a bomb went off in her brain.” He snaps a vial into a hypospray.

“Give me options!” There was nothing Janeway feared encountering more than a medical emergency. They made her feel utterly powerless. Out here in the Delta Quadrant, she had stood over too many biobeds and said goodbye to too many people. She was damned if she was going to say goodbye to B’Elanna.

“Regeneration,” Seven says instantly. “Biological cells go into senescence during regeneration cycles.”

The Doctor follows her train of thought. “The tissue damage would be completely arrested.”

“But the nanoprobes would keep healing her?” Janeway asks the logical question.

“Perhaps,” Seven says cautiously.

“Perhaps is all we’ve got.”

In Cargo Bay Two, Seven selects Mezoti’s old alcove as B’Elanna’s temporary accommodation. It is the alcove closest to the one Seven uses. Mezoti was one of the Borg children Voyager had rescued from a derelict cube. She wonders if this choice is significant in some way. She had formed a unique bond with the girl, who was wilful, determined and precocious. Perhaps she recognised herself in the precocious child, and perhaps she now sees parts of Mezoti reflected in B’Elanna. Mezoti was the last one she would say goodnight to when she “tucked her in” at night. It was the perfect alcove to choose: it kept Mezoti safe and it would keep B’Elanna safe too.

“How are you holding up?” Janeway asks softly, touching her arm.

The question breaks Seven’s concentration on the task at hand. It’s only then that she appreciates how strange her body feels- cold and tingly. Breathing doesn’t come naturally, either. She has a unique sensation- an aching sickness each time she pictures B’Elanna fading before her eyes. She wishes that the weapon had struck her instead. Guilt. It was a devastating feeling.

Seven blinks and shakes her head, unable to formulate a response much less articulate one. Her chest tightens, her eyes burn and threaten to spill tears. “It should have been me,” she whispers.

“B’Elanna would not want you to think like that,” Janeway says. Her voice and her lip trembles as she speaks.

Icheb, the only one of the Borg children who had remained onboard, approaches them. He is a teenager approaching adulthood. Despite having few memories of experiences outside of assimilation, he is unusually sensitive to the emotional state of others.

“Assist me,” Seven says urgently.

“You are adjusting the regeneration cycle parameters.”

“Correct. Lieutenant Torres was injured in the away mission. I assimilated her. We must adapt the cycle for her physiology.” With Icheb’s help, Seven writes several additional subroutines and presses her combadge. “Seven of Nine to Sick Bay, ready for transport.”

A whole biobed with B’Elanna laying on it and The Doctor, who had slapped on his mobile emitter, appear. Immediately, Seven scoops the limp body into her arms and carries her to the alcove. 

“How are we going to get her to stand in there if she’s unconscious?”

Seven positions B’Elanna vertically. “Computer, activate force field. Pattern: Seven-omega-three.” Satisfied that the field is holding, she initialises the regeneration cycle. B’Elanna is suspended in the alcove, the toes of one foot touch the ground, the other foot is simply hanging there. But she is alive.

The Doctor scans B’Elanna. “I’m reading a decrease in biological processes. DNA replication has ceased, transcription and translation are minimal, enzymatic activity has slowed. Hopefully your nanoprobes can get to work.”

“What happened to Lieutenant Torres?” Icheb asks with deep concern. “Were you hurt?”

“We encountered a hostile species. They attacked us,” Seven explains. She has already briefed Janeway on the mission, and finds it is easier to recount the events the second time. She continues by rote, “I was not injured. Only the Lieutenant was hit by their weapons fire. I injected her with nanoprobes to stop the damage caused by the weapon.”

“What’s the prognosis?” Janeway asks.

The Doctor throws his hands up theatrically. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’re just going to have to wait and see what regeneration does because none of the drugs we have available have made a difference. If the biological damage heals, we can worry about the assimilation issue then.”

B’Elanna’s skin is now distinctly grey. A small cybernetic implant has erupted out of the back of her hand. Silvery and circular it might have passed for jewellery in some cultures. Seven suspects that there will be more implants concealed by her uniform. That thought was disquieting. It wasn’t the implants themselves; Seven accepted her own implants as an intrinsic part of her identity. They added to her person. However, where they were now sprouting out of B’Elanna, they were literally displacing her. The guilt comes flooding back. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to be in the cargo bay any longer.

“Captain, I must analyse the data from the away mission. Perhaps there is some clue as to the identity of our attackers.”

Janeway gives her a long look. “Are you sure you’re up to going straight back to work?”

“Yes, Captain.” Seven sounds more decisive then she feels. She glances towards B’Elanna in the alcove, “Please.”

Janeway puts her hands on Seven’s arms and squeezes gently. “I’m always here for you.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Icheb accompanies Seven to Astrometrics, ostensibly to assist with data analysis, but beyond that he senses she doesn’t want to be alone. She doesn’t tell him so, but she’s glad he’s there.

The sensor data from the Flyer yields very little useful information- the radiation had introduced a lot of noise, which obscured meaningful signal. Seven has been at it for hours, but none of her algorithms are teasing out the information from the sensor data; who the aliens are remains a mystery. The image of B’Elanna’s body arching backwards in agony keeps swimming into focus. She raps the backs of her hands against the console.

Icheb has never known Seven to communicate frustration though a physical gesture. His brown eyes look at her kindly.

“I apologise,” Seven says. “I do not feel like myself.” The urge to find out who had attacked them consumed her. She partly understood the forces driving her, and partly did not. Identifying the aliens might lead to identifying the type of weapon and therefore the best treatment for B’Elanna. That made sense to her. What was unfamiliar was a personal wish to find them, track them down and mete out some kind of retribution. That feeling was like an invader into her consciousness.

The data is simply too garbled to make sense of. There is nothing that she can do now to assist B’Elanna. All she can do is wait and hope regeneration weaves some magic. She bangs her hands on the console, as if it were to blame for the state of affairs, surprising herself and Icheb with such an illogical action.

Icheb’s eyes glow with concern. “You are worried about Lieutenant Torres.”

“She was injured because of me,” Seven says bitterly.

“Not because of you. You were attacked by other beings. She is alive because of your actions.”

“I must find who did this.”

Icheb takes a step toward her, alarmed at the grinding of her jaw. “Are you sure you were not injured? You are not behaving normally.”

“I told you,” Seven says, hearing her voice raise as if someone else was holding the volume control, “I am not injured. If you are unable to assist me, you should return to the cargo bay.”

Icheb is standing before her. He is saying something; his lips are moving, but she can’t hear it. Her vision is blurred. Her head pounds like something is trying to break out from within. She closes her eyes and clutches at her ocular implant. She feels dizzy, like she’s in two places at once. She collapses forwards into him. Together, they stagger out of Astrometrics.

“What’s wrong with me?” Torres howls at The Doctor. She is trying to lunge at him, but finds she has all the coordination of a baby foal. Anytime she tries to move in one direction, she’s resisted by an unseen force. It’s like she’s a puppet dangling at the end of someone else’s strings. The backs of her hands are mottled and grey. There’s something stuck on her right hand. It doesn’t come off. It’s an implant, she realises in horror; she tries to rip it out with her other hand. “What happened to me?”

It looks almost comical- The Doctor scampering about the Cargo Bay, twisting to keep out of Torres’ reach. Made of photons, he can’t be injured by a patient in distress but the mobile emitter that gave him free rein outside of Sick Bay was a whole different story. “Doctor to Captain Janeway, emergency in the cargo bay. The regeneration cycle was interrupted,” he calls through gritted teeth.

_ “On my way Doctor.” _

“Lieutenant. I think it might be best if you take a seat,” he says, patting the top of a cargo container.

“What the hell is going on?”

“What’s the last thing you recall?”

She remembers seeing aliens with weapons and then intense pain. A look of horror on Seven’s face. And then nothing. But there was something else; a memory just out of reach. She closes her eyes and fights to grab onto it. She sees herself lying unconscious on the floor in the Flyer. But how can she remember looking down at her own body?

Seven lurches through the cargo bay doors, leaning heavily on Icheb for support.

“You! You did this to me,” B’Elanna cries out. She suddenly finds she has more control over her bodily movements. Her finger jabs at the air. She moves towards Seven, fists balled up. “You’ve assimilated me!”

Seven, herself suddenly feeling less disoriented, steps aside from Icheb and motions that he need not intervene. She allows B’Elanna to collide with her, like a wave crashing against a cliff. She grabs B’Elanna’s shoulders and holds her gaze. “I had to,” she says, each word laden with uncharacteristic emotion.

B’Elanna realises that the memory of seeing her body lying prone in the Flyer was emanating from Seven’s mind. The assimilation must allow her to see it somehow. Seven’s voice was in her head like a narrator recounting in exquisite definition the minutes that her life had hung in the balance. Witnessed her near-death through someone else’s eyes was the least dignified experience of her life. Her own body had betrayed her- it had thrashed around and gurgled. And yet, Seven had seen her vulnerability and stayed at her side, wiping the excretions from her mouth, smoothing her hair, and singing to her. Her balled-up fists unwound and came to rest softly on Seven’s chest.

“It was the only way to keep you alive,” Seven tells her in a voice so quiet it is barely audible.

Janeway has arrived now. The Doctor looks grateful. She shepherds B’Elanna to sit down. The physical connection between B’Elanna and Seven has been broken, but she remains aware of her in a way that she cannot entirely make sense of. It was like some strands of Seven had been interwoven with the fabric of her being. She feels like she is somehow  _ more _ than the woman she was. Janeway sits close to her, her eyes drifting over her features taking in all of the changes to her appearance. The Doctor hovers nervously, hypospray in hand. Seven slips into the background.

“How are you feeling?” Janeway asks in her rich, compassionate voice.

“I’m not sure, honestly,” B’Elanna responds. “How do I look?”

“A little bit different,” Janeway replies with maternal softness.

“I want to see.” B’Elanna is handed a PADD to serve as a mirror. She gasps at her reflection. It’s monstrously different. Her face, her eyes, her lips, all grey. The veins in her face have darkened and zig-zag beneath her skin. Her hair, more brittle, has lost its lustre. But she’s alive.  _ I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive _ , she repeats under her breath, because that’s really all that matters.

“I ordered Seven to assimilate you,” Janeway says, her arm hooking around B’Elanna’s shoulders.

“I know that now,” B’Elanna says. Her anger has ebbed away, supplanted by an intellectual curiosity that is both familiar and not quite familiar. She actually quite likes the way the implant in her hand twinkles in the light. “Will I always be like this?” she asks, glancing between the Captain and The Doctor.

Janeway looks to the EMH, deferring to his expert opinion. “It’s too early to tell, I’m afraid. Your neural tissue is healing. We will need to run tests before we sever the connection between you and Seven,” he pauses to let that information sink in. “But, I am confident in restoring your physical appearance,” he adds more brightly.

“Seven?” Janeway indicates that she should sit with them.

“The Doctor has been successful in severing Borg connections on previous occasions. I do not see a reason why it would not be possible in this case.”

“Are you okay?” B’Elanna asks, genuinely.

“I do not know,” Seven answers. “I feel unsettled,” she elaborates while rubbing at her temples.

B’Elanna chuckles. “That’s how I feel a lot of the time. Except now I feel calmer.” She looks more closely at Seven. “You’re in pain.”

“The discomfort is mild,” Seven replies while The Doctor waves a medical scanner to and fro.

“Hmm, some of your neurotransmitter readings are slightly elevated, but nothing too alarming. It may be a side-effect of the assimilation process,” he says.

“How did you know that?” Janeway asks B’Elanna.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know exactly. Are we a collective?” she asks Seven.

Janeway eyes flash anxiously at that word.

“I do not believe so,” Seven reassures. “I am aware of my individuality although I am also aware of your presence. It is very different to my experience of the Borg Collective.”

“I think I saw what you were remembering just now,” B’Elanna says.

“The Flyer?” Seven asks, and B’Elanna nods. Seven is quiet for a moment, “I do not hear your thoughts. Do you hear mine?”

B’Elanna screws her eyes tightly shut, as if that would make a difference. “No.”

“There is some harmonisation of your brain waves,” The Doctor says, analysing the streams of data. “But you are two clearly distinct individuals,” he adds, to the Captain’s relief.

“Ordinarily, assimilation creates a neural link between individual drones. It may be that we can perceive certain thoughts through this connection. I sensed your anger towards me earlier, Lieutenant, and you sensed my memories from the Flyer.”

“When I saw your memory, it was like your voice was in my head, but I don’t hear it now. Maybe it’s something to do with the strength of the feeling?”

“Perhaps. I do not know how to explain it.” She turns to the Captain. “I do not believe it is dangerous, however.”

“The minute that changes, I want you to report it,” Janeway says.

“What happens now?” B’Elanna asks.

“I think you need more time to regenerate. Once the damage is healed, we can assess the options,” The Doctor says as authoritatively as one can when faced with an unprecedented situation.

B’Elanna eyes the alcove with trepidation. The thought of being put to sleep left her feeling vulnerable. Like a teenager manipulating her way out of an early bedtime, she appeals to Janeway. “What about Engineering, and getting that transwarp coil installed? It would be a shame if all this had been for nothing.”

“Right now the priority is for you to get better. Carey can handle Engineering. The coil will have to wait until you’ve regenerated.”

“I’m not going to get out of it, am I?”

“I’m afraid not.” Janeway leads her gently, but firmly, to the alcove.

B’Elanna stands in what she imagines is roughly the right place. “How does this work?”

Janeway was quite familiar with the alcoves because she had ‘tucked Seven in’ on more than one occasion. She taps a few commands into the control panel and gestures towards a button. “When I press this, the cycle will begin. You’ll go out like a light if you’re anything like Seven.”

“Sounds simple enough. Let’s get it over with, then.”

“I will remain here with you,” Seven says, correctly sensing that B’Elanna was not at all relaxed about being put to sleep. “I believe it will be beneficial for me to regenerate also.”


	8. Unimatrix

B’Elanna’s eyelids flutter closed as soon as Janeway initiates the cycle. She thinks she must be dreaming because she’s in a pine forest, but it’s much more vivid than a dream. The air smells light and fresh. Seven is standing next to her, but she looks different. Her blonde hair is tied up in a loose ponytail, a couple of errant strands framing her face, and B’Elanna could have sworn that the colour of her biosuit has changed to blue. She thinks this is the nicest of Seven’s biosuits- the blue brings out her eyes. B’Elanna herself looks different too. She’s wearing an outfit from her Maquis days: a tank top and baggy brown trousers with pockets everywhere. When she went on raids, she would stuff the pockets with anything that looked like it might be useful. Chakotay used to joke that she could bring home her own body weight in junk. Her bare arms were her normal skin tone: no trace of the Borg-grey.

Seven looks up at the trees, smiling when she sees a small mammal scamper over a branch. “Where are we?” she asks B’Elanna.

“How the hell would I know? Is this a dream?”

“This is regeneration. We have created a unimatrix,” Seven says as she wanders between the trees. “It is a construct that we have both entered because our neural interlink frequencies are identical,” she explains.

“Why is the Borg unimatrix a forest?”

“Do you recognise this place? I do not. I believe it must be derived from your memories and experiences.”

B’Elanna looks around. The sunlight pokes through the conifers, dappling the forest floor. It’s warm and there are flying insects zig-zagging all around. If she had not been to this exact place before, it was certainly a pretty close representation of places she had been to. “It’s like a bunch of vacations that my father took me on when I was a kid. We’d go camping and climbing with my cousins.”

“This is Earth?”

“Yeah, North American continent.” They start walking side by side, following a trail through the trees. “So why do we look different?”

Seven brushes some strands of hair out of her face. “I am not sure. Perhaps our appearances reflect how you think of us.”

B’Elanna considers that explanation- it makes sense to her that she sees herself still as a rebel, an outsider. For some reason she doesn’t want to dwell too deeply on why Seven has a softened look in this place, but perhaps saving her life has something to do with it.

They walk on for a while. Seven crouches down suddenly, transfixed on something up ahead. B’Elanna follows her gaze. It was a chipmunk, twiddling a nut between her paws, using her teeth to feel out a weak spot she can crack open. The little creature looks straight at them, nose twitching in the air. Seven is entranced, her eyes wide with joy. The chipmunk throws the empty shell away and scurries back into the forest, black and white tail following behind. Seven’s smile lights up her face, and when she turns to look at B’Elanna, it is like basking in a sunbeam.

“You’ve never seen a chipmunk?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think regeneration would be like this. Not that I ever really thought about what it’s like for you.”

“It is not usually like this.”

“What’s it like?” 

“I am alone, generally in Astrometrics or Cargo Bay Two. Occasionally I am on a Borg ship. I read or listen to music. The Doctor and the Captain have given me lists of popular culture to assimilate so that I can ‘fit in’ better.”

“So listening to  _ La bohème _ is kinda like homework?”

“Yes.” The answer hung in the air inviting further questions.

“You don’t enjoy it?”

Seven considered how to respond. “I am grateful to them for sharing their interests with me. However, I have not found other members of the crew to be receptive to discussing the great operatic works of Earth’s classical composers.”

“Maybe you need to figure out some things you like.”

“Yes,” Seven says again, letting the word hang, as if it were uplifted by unspoken thoughts. “I like this regeneration.”

B’Elanna smiles. “Yeah, it must be nice to get outside sometimes.”

“I was not simply referring to the location.”

Something about Seven’s tone makes B’Elanna turn to look at her. Not concentrating on where her feet are taking her, she trips clean over a gnarly tree root. She lands flat on her face. Smooth, she thinks. Giggling, she rolls over, pine needles clinging to her hair.

Seven has dropped to kneel by her side, her face tight with worry. “Are you hurt?”

“Just my pride.” B’Elanna props herself up on her elbows and peers at Seven. “Are you okay?”

“I am glad you are uninjured.” Seven offers her hand, which B’Elanna takes to rise to her feet.

“Hey. I’m not that fragile, okay? Can you even get hurt in a unimatrix?”

“Your physical body cannot be injured. But you can experience pain. If the pain is sufficiently severe, then your regeneration cycle will prematurely end.”

B’Elanna picks the green-brown shards of pine from her hair. “Either way, it takes more than a trip in the forest to slow me down. I’ll prove it to you. Come on.” B’Elanna tugs Seven along by the hand. They jog through the forest until they come to a hill. The trees had thinned out. The slope upwards was formed of blocky limestone that looked like a giant’s staircase. Shielding her eyes against the sun, B’Elanna looks upward at the peak. “Think you can climb this?”

Seven follows B’Elanna’s lead, scrambling up behind her. Near the summit, it starts to get steep. B’Elanna shows Seven how to select hand and footholds and together they make it to the top. From their position high above the tree line, the forest they had come through stretches out like a carpet of green. In the other direction lay a brilliant blue lake. The light bounced off its placid surface making it shimmer. The warmth of the sun was tempered by the faintest of breezes. A flock of birds flew in formation towards the horizon.

Breathing heavily from the climb, B’Elanna surveys the view. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Seven replies.

This was the kind of thing B’Elanna had never done with Tom. An adventure like this, not a scripted Holonovel, but an organic experience. She spies a rocky ledge that juts out over the lake. “Come here.” The ledge was narrow for two, but it gave the illusion of floating over the lake below. She was close enough to Seven to sense her shaking. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“Borg are not afraid of heights,” Seven replies coolly. “However, this is a little high.”

B’Elanna slings an arm low around Seven’s waist. “I’ve got you.” Seven looks puzzled momentarily, but settles into the touch. B’Elanna isn’t entirely sure where this new-found comfort in physical contact has come from, but she convinces herself it’s just a side effect of nearly dying. B’Elanna notices how the blue of the water matches the blue of Seven’s biosuit and how both bring out her eyes. She wonders again about why Seven’s appearance looks slightly less perfect in this place. She decides she likes it, regardless.

A sound breaks their reverie. B’Elanna can’t place where it is coming from, but it irritates her.

“It is only a crewman trying to locate something in the cargo bay,” Seven reassures her.

B’Elanna had forgotten her body was really standing still in an alcove. The bright sun, the cool breeze and warmth of Seven’s body all felt so completely real. “Can he be quieter?” she grumbles, while simultaneously listening intently to each word. “Is that Fitzpatrick?”

“I believe so.”

“Did he just call us ‘ _ Sleeping Beauties _ ’?”

“Yes.”

“He’s standing right next to us, isn’t he?” B’Elanna is incandescent. “How do we wake up out of this thing?”

Seven smiles, a little sadly. “It is better to complete regeneration. I have been called much worse than a  _ Sleeping Beauty _ .”

_ Much worse _ . B’Elanna can only imagine just how much worse. “Seven, this is unacceptable.” Right now, she was basically asleep in an area that the whole crew could trample through whenever they liked. That was a gross invasion of privacy in itself. To cap it off, the crew felt emboldened to pass inappropriate comments, none of which they’d say if they knew she or Seven could hear them. She felt sick. “Have you never told the Captain about this?”

Seven shrugs. “It has never seemed relevant.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

Seven’s brow furrows and B’Elanna can tell she’s puzzled by her outrage. “This is my life,” Seven says simply. She touches B’Elanna’s arm, squeezes it gently as if she’s telling B’Elanna not to push any further on this, at least not for now.

Seven walks back off the ledge and sits on a boulder. B’Elanna joins her and they sit in silence for a long while. The sun had started to dip, painting the sky orange. The air was stiller. The chirrups of insects and warbles of birdsong drifted out from the trees. Everything had been moving so quickly- Tom, the exigencies of being surrounded by Borg, the away mission- it felt good to just stop for a moment.

The minutes yawned around them, the quiet broken by the occasional smattering of conversation where B’Elanna would pick out different species of bird from their song. She was amazed she could still remember this stuff from a world and a life she had left behind long ago. Seven pointed out a line of ants on the march.

“They are like Borg,” Seven observes. She picks up a twig and places it across the ants’ path. The ants investigated the barrier and adapted; marching around it and continuing on their original trajectory. “Resistance is futile.”

Seven rejoins B’Elanna on the boulder. The temperature was dropping as the sun was swallowed by the horizon. B’Elanna shivers; gooseflesh appearing on her arms. It’s barely perceptible, but they both shuffle closer to one another. She’s acutely aware of the points at which their legs touch. She could not define exactly what her feelings were in the moment, just that they were intense. Maybe all she was feeling was a mixture of relief and gratitude for Seven saving her life. She studies Seven’s face in profile and wonders what she’s thinking. The other woman turns to her then, and raises her hand toward her face.

“You still have pine needles in your hair,” Seven says softly.

B’Elanna’s eyes close, anticipating Seven’s touch.

She blinks and ‘awakes’ back in the cargo bay. Inwardly, she wishes the regeneration cycle had run just a few more moments. She closes her eyes. Absently, she runs her hand through her hair, half-expecting to brush out pine needles. She opens her eyes to see that Seven had already stepped out of her alcove and was hovering at her side.

“Good morning.”

“Was that a dream? Were you really there?” B’Elanna asks, still not quite sure exactly what she had experienced.

“The unimatrix was not a dream,” Seven replies. “We were both there, or at least part of our consciousnesses were.”

B’Elanna glances at Icheb, who is still regenerating in his alcove. Now that she knows he can hear her, she lowers her voice so as not to disturb him. “You don’t regenerate together?”

Seven shakes her head. “No. Our interlink frequencies are different.” She holds out her hand to help B’Elanna step out of the alcove. Perhaps it is simply an efficient gesture, but somehow it feels chivalrous. Now standing facing each other, Seven looks down and turns B’Elanna’s hand over, frowning.

The growth of the implant on the back of her hand startles B’Elanna at first. Metallic tendrils have sprouted from the circular unit overnight and splayed out over her knuckles. She pushes her sleeve up to find a lattice of metal woven around her forearm. She feels an innate revulsion at the sight of the implants- the idea of assimilation was terrifying to most people- but this is softened by the knowledge that she is alive because of them. She also feels intrigued, curious as to the purpose of the implant. She is keenly aware, however, that Seven is cradling her hand as though it is irreparably damaged. For some reason, her heart beats faster, despite the best efforts of the nanoprobes to maintain her physiological parameters.

“Do you know what it does?”

Seven nods. “It enhances the precision and speed of the muscle fibres it connects to and increases the sensitivity of the touch receptors in your skin,” she says flatly.

“So I’ll be able to use a control panel like you?” When Seven inclines her head, B’Elanna squeezes her hand. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Why are you upset?”

“I have changed what you are,” Seven replies, not making eye contact. “I do not want you to hate me for doing this to you.”

“I don’t.” She’s still holding Seven’s hand, and consciously does not let go. Seven was right; the implant rendered her more sensitive to everything. She feels all of the ridges and faintest fine hairs in Seven’s skin. With her thumb she makes tiny circular soothing movements. “You’re still feeling out of sorts, huh?”

“Yes. I believe that the link between us is causing me to perceive things more as you do.”

A couple of days ago B’Elanna would have heard this as an accusation of emotional volatility. Instead, her eyebrows raise in amusement. What she can’t work out is whether that’s because she’s soaked up some of Seven’s traits through assimilation that dampen her natural hot-headed tendency, or because the relationship between them is growing into a real friendship. “Irrationally, you mean?” she says lightly.

“Not irrationally; with more emotion than I am used to,” Seven corrects, diplomatically.

“This won’t last forever. We’ll get back to normal once the connection is severed,” B’Elanna said, in a tone she intends to be wryly reassuring.

“Yes. I must report to Astrometrics.” Seven extricates herself from B’Elanna’s grasp. It’s a little abrupt, and B’Elanna wonders if she’s said something wrong.


	9. Appearances

B’Elanna is not able to forget that she looks like a Borg drone in Starfleet uniform. Every member of the crew she passes resembles a rabbit caught in headlights. One or two literally jump. Their fear is understandable- it’s completely rational to be afraid of the Borg, afterall.

She makes a conscious effort to smile at everybody she sees. She wonders if perhaps a smiling drone is even more terrifying than an impassive automaton. She is glad when the doors to Sick Bay close behind her. The sidelong looks and huddled whispers of her nervous shipmates, which she could now hear with Borg-enhanced acuity, were wearing. How Seven had coped with this without dropping someone out of an airlock, she couldn’t fathom. An old human expression comes to her mind: one should never judge another without walking a mile in their shoes. Nevermind a mile- a few metres was sufficient to see why Seven might have chosen to keep herself on the social margins, if only to be out of earshot of the ignorant mutterings of the crew. Casual cruelty, that was the phrase Seven had used, and it certainly fit.

For too long B’Elanna had too easily dismissed Seven as robotic, incapable of empathy. If she had looked just a little deeper, might she have seen the curious and gentle soul who could be enraptured by a chipmunk. She berated herself for all the times she’d dished out smart-assed  _ bon mots _ at Seven’s expense, for all the times she’d called her The Borg or The Drone or The Automaton- as if she were a thing, not a person. She resolved to be part of the solution from now on.

“Hey, Doc.”

“Ah, Lieutenant. How was your first regeneration?” The Doctor asks as he starts a neural scan.

“Not what I expected. But good.” It’s an understatement, but she doesn’t think The Doctor needs to hear her wax lyrical about how amazing regenerating had been, and honestly, nor does she want to tell him.

The Doctor hums as he works, it sounds like the theme from the opera Seven had played for her. “Your neural tissue is making an excellent recovery. The damage has been completely arrested.” On the monitor, he calls up the scan he had taken yesterday to compare the data. “Look here- these patches of tissue were obliterated, but today they are healthy, functioning cells.”

“That’s good, right?”

“I would say so. The remainder of the damage is restricted to regions of the brain responsible for autonomic functions. Those functions are now being controlled by your cybernetic accessories. Are the implants bothering you?”

B’Elanna touches her forearm and flexes her fingers. “No.”

“Anything else to report?”

“Such as?”

He huffs. “Do you still feel like an individual? Do you have the urge to go about assimilating the crew?”

“Yes and no. Besides, I don’t think I’ve got the tube-things yet, do I?”

“Not yet.” The Doctor puts down his tricorder and speaks in his most gentle bedside tone. “I know you probably want the nanoprobes out and to be unlinked from Seven as soon as possible. But I cannot sever you and remove the implants because I have no viable treatment alternative to restore your damaged neural tissue. We’re just going to have to let the regeneration cycles do their work. What I’m saying is,” his voice drops sympathetically, “you’re going to have to live like this for a little while longer. I don’t know exactly how long, but I will monitor your progress every day.”

“Okay.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows raise causing those deep lines to appear on his forehead. “I expected more of a fight about that.”

“I don’t always put up a fight,” she replies, folding her arms across her body defensively.

“Hmmm,” The Doctor remarks dubiously. “I can cosmetically alter your appearance in the meantime. I cannot remove the implants but I can disguise them and restore your normal skin tone.”

“Is that necessary?”

“No, but I thought you’d want me to.”

B’Elanna considers the idea. Seven had gifted her life without a thought to any potential risk to herself. If her temporarily changed appearance was the cost then she would gladly pay it. It would be dishonourable not to, she thought. “Thanks, but I’d rather stay like this.”

The Doctor peers at her intently. “And why would that be?”

“Doc, you know Seven pretty well, right?”

He preens slightly, in the way that he does when he’s pleased with himself. “Yes, I’ve spent quite a lot of time with her- teaching her the social lessons I’ve learned since I was activated.”

“I used to think she didn’t care about what anyone thinks, but I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” The Doctor replies, his tone growing more serious. “I would say that she does care a great deal. What she’s lacked is her own vocabulary to express that.”

“I’m kinda figuring that out. She took a huge risk assimilating me and I don’t even really know why. If she hadn’t, I’d be dead. Saying  _ thanks  _ doesn’t really cut it. If you cover up the implants, I’m afraid she’ll think I’m ungrateful.”

“I understand,” he says, with approval colouring his voice.

“I’m feeling fine. Better than fine, actually. You reckon I’m fit for duty?”

He reviews the scans again, occasionally humming fragments of a tune. “I can’t see a medical reason to keep you off duty. I’ll inform the Captain.”

“Great- thanks Doc. I’ll head up to the Bridge and see her about going back to work.”

She’s not fazed by the shocked silence of the Bridge crew when the turbolift doors slide open. The Captain aside, no one else on the Bridge had seen her physical transformation. She avoids meeting the eyes of Tom Paris, whose seat was swivelled around in the direction of Ops. No doubt he had been engaging in witty banter with Harry Kim. The Captain got up out of her chair to find out why the ordinary chatter had clammed up.

“B’Elanna, what are you doing up and about?”

“May I speak with you, please, Captain?”

Janeway gestures expansively toward her ready room, nodding at Chakotay to take command.

“Coffee?” Janeway asks, once inside. She kept a cafetiere on her desk along with a set of china cups. It was about the only luxury that B’Elanna knew the Captain to indulge in.

“Please,” she replies, not feeling remotely thirsty but wanting to prove to Janeway she was her normal self.

They sit on the sofa beneath the window. Janeway tended to prefer this less formal arrangement for individual staff meetings. “How are you feeling?”

“Honestly, I feel fine. Regeneration is like the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.”

Janeway smiles and B’Elanna can’t help but notice the dark rings around her eyes. “If it didn’t involve assimilation, I might try it myself.” She blows gently over her coffee and sips. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to report back for duty.” Noting the look of concern, B’Elanna adds, “I’ve seen The Doctor, he agrees I’m fit enough so long as I stick to the regeneration cycles.”

“This seems a little soon. You’ve been through a massive change overnight.”

“Captain, the important things haven’t changed. We’re still in a region of heavy Borg activity. I’m still the best engineer on Voyager,” she pauses and flexes her enhanced arm, “maybe even better than I was. I want to get started on installing the transwarp coil so we can get out of here as quickly as possible.”

“I am well aware of where we are, Lieutenant,” Janeway says, with just enough edge to remind B’Elanna of the command structure. “I’m concerned that we don’t fully understand the connection between you and Seven, or its effects. I don’t want to put you or Voyager at any risk.”

“I’m sorry, Captain. I just want to help.”

Janeway deliberates. She sips her coffee once more, peering intently at B’Elanna over the rim of the mug. “You can report to Engineering.” B’Elanna springs up out of the sofa. Janeway holds up a hand. “But. If you feel that anything is even slightly out of the ordinary, then I expect you to report immediately to Sick Bay. I trust that The Doctor has scheduled regular monitoring appointments?”

“I will and he has.” Having been dismissed, B’Elanna turns to leave, but then pauses, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

“Is there something else?”

“Captain, why does Seven have to sleep in the Cargo Bay?” She doesn’t even notice she’s substituted the altogether more human ‘sleep’ for regenerate in the sentence.

“She regenerates there because the alcoves are there,” Janeway replies as though the question were so obvious it need not be asked.

“I know that. But anybody can walk in at any time. Anybody does walk in at any time. It’s not right.”

Janeway’s face blanches. She’s embarrassed because she’s never considered this before, B’Elanna thinks.

“She has never expressed any discomfort with the arrangement.”

“I know. I never thought about it before now.” B’Elanna realises she must tread carefully over this subject. Janeway has a special bond with Seven. While it’s true that Janeway’s protective instinct- the fiercest mother hen- extends over each and every person onboard Voyager, with Seven it’s something else. She’s never speculated on it too much but maternal doesn’t quite capture it.

B’Elanna enjoys a special relationship with Janeway too. In the early days, they were often at loggerheads, but quickly found out they were cut from similar cloth- quick-witted, headstrong, impetuous- neither tolerated fools gladly. There was no one else, not even among the engineers, who shared the same passion or aptitude for warp theory. To be sure they had had their differences; B’Elanna’s rebellious streak manifested itself frequently and she was not afraid to clash loudly and forcefully with the woman who she would come to accept as her Captain. The trust between them had been forged in those fires, and was firmly established when the Captain selected her to be chief engineer ahead of all the Starfleet crew.

Janeway favours her enough to listen to her, to encourage her, to counsel her about Tom, but B’Elanna isn’t sure how far she can push a conversation about Seven. She decides not to mention the Fitzpatrick incident straight away. She takes a seat next to Janeway again.

“I know I’ve only been like this,” she says, gesturing up and down her transformed body, “for a hot minute. But it’s enough to know first-hand that the crew treats Seven and Icheb differently. And I know I was part of the problem.”

Janeway bristles. “Differently how?”

B’Elanna chooses her next word with care. She knows how hard the Captain had worked to integrate the crew. Janeway had blended Starfleet and Maquis together, and welcomed Neelix and Kes in their journey. Being alone on the other side of the galaxy apart from just about everyone they loved was the common ground that they all shared. It was the nascent bond between them that hardened over time. But Seven hadn’t been absorbed into their matrix in the same way; she was a piece that didn’t fit. “Outcasts.”

Janeway’s face bleeds even more colour, as if she’s been stung.

“What I mean is the crew can’t see past the implants- all they see is a Borg. That’s all I used to see, too. And I think we have treated her differently because of something that’s not her fault.” A lump forms in her throat- no one had looked past the exterior of the misfit kid with ridges on her forehead living in a human colony. She feels ashamed about making the same mistake with Seven.

“She’s a valued member of my crew. I know it hasn’t been easy for her,” Janeway’s voice cracks with a little emotion, and her shoulders have slumped somewhat. “What do you think I can do about how other people see her?”

“I don’t think it’ll fix everything overnight, but I want to ask your permission to adapt the Cargo Bay into personal quarters for Seven and Icheb. You know, with a door so they have privacy especially when they’re regenerating.”

“Privacy?” Janeway’s voice has an edge.

“I didn’t know this, but regeneration isn’t exactly like sleeping. You can hear what’s happening around you, what’s being said.” She doesn’t reveal anything more specific- she doesn’t need to. From the way Janeway pinches the bridge of her nose it’s clear that this is new information to her too, and it’s also clear she can imagine what B’Elanna means.

“I just figured if she had quarters like everyone else then maybe-”

“-she’d be treated like everyone else and enjoy safety and privacy like everyone else,” the Captain completes.

“It might be a start, at least.”

Janeway gives B’Elanna one of the warmest smiles she ever has. “I want you on it as soon as we’re clear of all this,” Janeway says as she nods to the space outside the window. Her face tightens and her tone sharpens. Just for a moment, her command mask slips to reveal the woman who cares very much for Seven. “In the meantime, I want a privacy lock on Cargo Bay Two restricted to Seven, Icheb and yourself for the time being and I want any supplies stored in that bay moved out to Cargo Bay One- prioritise the items that we use most frequently. But check with Seven and Icheb when it’s convenient first.” Janeway strokes her throat pensively. “I need to know, B’Elanna, do I need to take any further action with any individual?”

“I don’t know, Captain.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

B’Elanna relates her experience of hearing Fitzpatrick through the regeneration cycle. She wonders if the Captain thinks she sounds silly- to have this reaction to being called a sleeping beauty, especially when the crew is in such a perilous part of space. She looks up at Janeway, almost embarrassed, but her Captain is visibly upset and thanks her when she stops speaking.

“That should not have happened to you, B’Elanna. Or to Seven. It is utterly unacceptable conduct and I will deal with it. If anything like it happens again, I want you to know that you can come to me at any time.”

Janeway sits back in her chair and B’Elanna senses that she’s internally reorganising everything to prioritise this. When she speaks again, the command mask is back in place. “How’s everything else?”

“Everything else?”

“I know it can’t be easy- the situation with Tom. You’ve been together for a while.”

B’Elanna clucks her tongue. She really, honestly hasn’t thought much about Tom- she’s certainly not missing him. She wonders what comfort he’d be to her now, if they were still together. “It’s okay,” she shrugs. “I’ll adapt.”

“You don’t need to put on a brave face, B’Elanna.”

“I’m not. Really,” she sighs and meets Janeway’s eye. “Tom and I weren’t right for each other, not long-term. Something like this was bound to happen eventually, you know?”

“I do,” Janeway says and B’Elanna knows she’s alluding to Mark, her ex-fiance who had moved on back in the Alpha Quadrant. “Even when you know in your heart they’re not your soulmate, it can still hurt, and I’m concerned about you.”

B’Elanna smiles wryly, “Accepting it was over did hurt, but I’m doing okay, really. Besides, I’ve got a few other things on my mind now.” Her tone grows serious. “I know I can come to you, Captain. And I’m grateful. Please trust me when I say everything’s alright.”

Janeway searches her eyes and nods. As B’Elanna leaves, she hears the Captain put a call out for Ensign Fitzpatrick to report to the ready room.

B’Elanna arrives in Engineering for the start of her shift and is greeted by gasps. Honestly, these reactions are starting to grate on her nerves. She steps into the middle of Engineering, next to the warp core, clears her throat and projects her voice loud enough so every engineer on both levels can hear her. “Listen up everyone. Seven had to assimilate me on the away mission. She saved my life. That’s why I’ve lost my tan and gained all the accessories. But I’m still the same Lieutenant Torres underneath the new hardware. Questions, comments? Good, we’ve got a transwarp coil to integrate, so let’s get back to work. Carey, what’s our status?”

Carey just stares at her mutely.

“Carey?” she repeats, her tone sharp enough to cut through the man’s flabbergast.

Carey’s head moves from side to side, literally shaking himself out of the shock. “All systems normal. Warp field stable.”

“Good.” She taps her communicator. “Torres to Seven of Nine.”

_ “Go ahead.” _

“I could use your help configuring the transwarp coil.”

A pause.  _ “You are on duty.”  _ Not judgmental, but concerned.

She gives Carey a thin-lipped smile, and turns away from him. “Doc’s totally on board and I persuaded Janeway. I’m feeling pretty good. So, are you too busy to help me tinker with this thing?”

_ “I will be there shortly.” _

The transwarp coil rests on a workbench. It looked typical of all the Borg technology B’Elanna had come across before- brutalist in design, all harsh lines, no curves. No soul. Even as it lay there, outside of its context, it imposed itself over Voyager’s softer architecture. “Any ideas how we’re gonna do this?”

Seven scans it and her brow furrows. As she reads the scan output, she seems to wince.

“Seven? Are you okay?”

“The intermittent discomfort I have experienced since the assimilation has returned. I am fine,” Seven replies and B’Elanna is not entirely convinced.

“You don’t seem fine. Do you need a trip to see The Doc?”

“I have a mild headache,” Seven acknowledges, “But I am functioning within normal parameters.” To prove her assertion she states categorically, “this is not a Borg transwarp coil.”

B’Elanna picks the thing up and turns it over a couple of times. “Looks pretty convincing to me.”

“Superficially, it does,” Seven agrees, but shows Torres the tricorder display. “However, its internal circuitry is not Borg. I could not get an internal reading of it when it was on the Borg derelict.”

B’Elanna folds her arms. “What the hell?” When Seven looks at her with uncertainty of whether that was actually a question to which she should answer, she clarifies. “Who would have done this?”

“I do not know. However, the aliens that attacked us appeared to have an interest in it.”

“Maybe they had the same idea as us- take it and fit it to their ship.”

“Perhaps.”

B’Elanna rubs her face. “Any idea what it actually does?”

“No. I cannot make that determination from the tricorder scan. I could interface with it.”

“Absolutely not! We stole it from a Borg ship that was in a trillion pieces. Maybe this thing caused the cube to blow up.”

Seven’s eyebrows quirk upwards. “That is a reasonable hypothesis.”

“Well this is just great,” B’Elanna laughs darkly. “I’m a Borg, we’re joined at the hip for the foreseeable future, and all we’ve got is this piece of junk. Janeway is gonna love this.”

Janeway did not love it. She’s staring out of the window of her ready room, while B’Elanna and Seven sit pensively. The coil, or whatever it is, sits on the coffee table. When Janeway speaks, it’s with her hands on her hips. “So, this is emitting a Borg signature? But it isn’t actually a Borg coil?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Is it a weapon of some kind?”

“I cannot ascertain the precise nature of the device,” Seven replies.

“Is there any way of establishing what it actually does?” Janeway asks.

“It has a normal Borg interface. I could link with it,” Seven says.

Janeway shakes her head. “No. I’m not prepared to take any more risks over this thing. The price has already been high.”

B’Elanna has drifted out of the conversation momentarily. A memory from her days in the Maquis resistance is painfully pushing forward into her consciousness.

“Lieutenant?” Seven asks, no doubt detecting something through their link.

“I’m okay,” B’Elanna replies. “I was just thinking about something we did on Volan II. The Maquis, I mean.” She proceeds to share the story. “The Cardassians occupied Volan II, a planet in the DMZ between Federation and Cardassian space, but for years before that it had just been a few colonists, mostly survivalist types and Federation misfits. The Cardassians came in and seized land, demanded taxes, property, food, you name it from the colonists. If a colonist couldn’t pay, they might be beaten or worse. The Cardassian Gul in command there - a thug called Tuchak - was a real sadist. He had a predilection for female colonists; the younger, the better. He’d have them dragged out of their homes or from the fields they worked. He needed to face justice, but there was only us.”

“Justice?” Janeway asks skeptically.

“Justice to us back then meant killing him,” B’Elanna explains unapologetically. “But there was no way we could get into his compound. I built a replica of a Cardassian mobile transmitter- I used parts of a real one and hid a remote explosive in it and planted it on a farm. Colonists were prohibited from having a transmitter, so when the Cardassians ‘found’ it when they carried out one of their property searches, they took it back to their compound straight away. When I pushed the remote detonator, Tuchak died. Maybe this device is a weapon like that- a lure hiding what it really is.”

What B’Elanna doesn’t say is that as well as Tuchak, thirteen other Cardassians were vaporised by that device. Two of them were children. It’s been nearly a decade but the guilt claws at her inside just as sharply as it ever did. Seven looks at her with understanding and compassion and B’Elanna wonders how much of her inner thoughts have been revealed through the link between them. 

“I see,” Janeway says, attempting but not entirely succeeding in sounding neutral. “That’s a hell of a lot of speculation, B’Elanna.”

“Is it? We found it on a Borg cube that had mysteriously been blown inside out and the aliens who attacked us while screaming  _ Borg _ seemed to know what this thing was.”

Janeway glances at the coil and rubs her chin. “Alright, what do we know as fact? This coil is definitely not of Borg origin?”

“Correct, Captain.”

“Has Astrometrics scanned any planets that might be home to a technologically advanced species?”

“There are several Class M planets within nearby systems,” Seven says. “I will initiate scans to identify signs of advanced industrialisation. Assimilation of a desirable species is one possible reason for the relatively high frequency of Borg activity in this area.”

“I want sensors scanning for any other vessels, too. We need to identify the aliens you encountered. Seven, I want you to work with Harry on that.” The Captain points at the coil. “Is it safe to keep this thing on board?”

“I cannot determine precisely what the internal circuitry does. If this is responsible for the destruction of the cube, I do not think it is an explosive device, not least because it was itself undamaged.”

“I want an officer briefing on this as soon as you’ve completed your analyses. B’Elanna, focus your efforts on scanning what this thing does and if it presents any risk to us. Seven, there is another matter I want to discuss with you,” Janeway says. B’Elanna has a pretty good idea of what that other matter is and throws Seven a supportive look as she follows Janeway out of Engineering.


	10. The nature of friendship

It’s force of habit rather than necessity that leads B’Elanna to the Mess Hall after her shift. Owing to her new Borgified physiology, she doesn’t need to ingest any nutrients (to adopt a very Seven-phrase). She picks a table off in the corner and waves when she sees Harry. Tom walks in and joins him. Harry smiles awkwardly and shrugs apologetically toward her. He looks so torn by the situation- trapped between loyalty to his best friend and solidarity with his wronged friend- that B’Elanna feels sorry for him.

Tom is freshly showered, even from this distance she can smell his favourite cologne rolling off him. She remembered he liked to take an inordinate amount of time over his hair- it was a source of such vanity- he always spent ages preening in front of the mirror. His style may look natural, but B’Elanna knows he will have taken his sweet time ruffling up and sculpting his fair locks. A couple of minutes pass by before Jenny Delaney turns up, her sister in tow. She and Tom feign surprise at seeing each other, and she joins his table.

B’Elanna scoffs aloud at the blatant attempt to pass off a pre-planned date as a chance encounter. They’re fooling no one, not even Harry, whose face darkens in embarrassment. But soon enough the group relaxes and starts chatting and joking and she’s on the outside again. The bustle of the Mess Hall plays out in front of her- an observer, not a participant- and she feels an acute sense of loneliness. She’s about to leave when Seven walks in, with Icheb and Naomi Wildman close behind. The youngsters sit at a table together, both of them concentrating on PADDs. Seven’s eyes scan the room and she walks purposefully toward her.

“May I join you?”

“Course you can,” B’Elanna replies, genuinely pleased to see Seven. She juts her chin towards the children. “They don’t want to sit with us?”

“They wish to finish their homework. Our usual routine is to work in the cargo bay.”

Seven’s life has these different threads she’s never paid much attention to before, B’Elanna thinks. She’d been vaguely aware that Seven had taken it on herself to tutor Naomi and Icheb. She’s about to ask her about the kids when out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tom muttering something to Jenny. She can’t hear what he says, but by the way their eyes dart towards her, she’s pretty sure it’s about her. Seven twists her head to follow what she’s looking at.

“Sorry, I got distracted.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’ve been better.”

“Do you wish to leave?”

“I was going to, but not now. It’s nice to see you,” B’Elanna says, and just for a moment Seven’s eyes seem to sparkle. “Sit down- you’re gonna give me a crick in my neck.” It must be Seven’s influence through their connection, but she no longer feels any compulsion to march over to Tom to deliver a piece of her mind.

“Good evening, ladies. Can I get you some tea?” It’s Neelix being his usual genial self.

“Sure.”

He pours tea into two cups and then waggles the pot in the direction of the children. “What have you got them working on today?”

“The rudiments of warp theory.”

Neelix chuckles as he walks back to the galley. “If it’s anything like the rudiments of biochemistry I tried to help Naomi with last week, they’ll be after your job before long, Lieutenant.”

“Mr Neelix is exaggerating. The programme I designed is not too challenging for the children.”

“Uh huh.”

“They are extremely capable,” Seven says with such pride and warmth, B’Elanna’s toes curl.

“Of course they are with you as their teacher.” B’Elanna idly stirs some sugar into her tea. “So, what did the Captain want to talk to you about?”

“I believe you are well aware of what the Captain talked to me about,” Seven replies and B’Elanna fears for a moment that she made a mistake in telling Janeway about the Fitzpatrick incident. “I cannot remember anyone intervening on my behalf before. I am unaccustomed to this feeling, this gratitude. I do not know what to say.”

B’Elanna shrugs bashfully. Seven doesn’t need to say anything, there is a warmth that sings to her through their connection. “Maybe we can set aside some time to talk about what you want?”

“What I want?” Seven repeats, one eyebrow ever so slightly raised.

B’Elanna clears her suddenly dry throat. “Didn’t Janeway talk to you about remodelling the cargo bay into proper quarters?”

“Yes.”

“So, we could talk about how you and Icheb want the cargo bay redesigned to make it more like home. I know we can’t start construction yet, but there’s no harm in planning.”

The reply comes crisply. “I see. Yes, I will give the matter some thought.”

B’Elanna notes the switch to more formal language with a little sadness; she’s learning that it’s how Seven deals with subjects that are emotionally difficult for her. ‘Home’ is one of those subjects.

She steers the conversation back to work. It’s easier for the both of them. “I’ve done a bit more work on analysing the coil, it’s an amazing copy of Borg technology.”

“Interesting,” Seven replies, immediately seeming more at ease. “Have you been able to reveal its inner mechanics?”

“I’ve been able to isolate part of the code that will download to anything that interfaces with it. If I send it to you, will you have time to take a look before the officers’ briefing tomorrow?”

“Of course. You shall have my report by eleven hundred tomorrow, Lieutenant.”

Seven’s use of her title doesn’t go unnoticed by B’Elanna. It feels like they’re hovering on the cusp of friendship, but neither one knows how to safely land. “So, have you found any planets those aliens might have come from?”

“Perhaps. There is a white dwarf system approximately five light years away. One of the planets in that system is Class M.”

“Go on,” B’Elanna prompts.

“Spectrographic analysis of the surface detected dilithium in quantities and concentrations indicating industrial development consistent with a warp capable society.” Seven looks away suddenly. “The surface of the planet is scarred, likely by some form of energy weapon. This is consistent with a Borg attack, however we are not close enough to scan for Borg energy signatures so I cannot be certain.”

“Life signs?”

“Voyager is too far away to detect life signs.”

“Can we do anything to boost the sensors?”

“We will enter sensor range along our current heading in a few hours,” Seven says quietly. In what’s becoming a habit, she rubs her temple.

“Headache’s back?” B’Elanna asks.

“Momentarily; it will pass,” Seven replies.

“You need to see The Doctor,” B’Elanna says firmly.

“I do not need to see him this instant,” Seven replies and on seeing B’Elanna’s reaction adds, “but I shall go tomorrow.”

“First thing in the morning? I’ll remind you.”

“I have a headache, not a memory problem,” Seven says wryly. “But I appreciate your interest in my well-being.” 

There it was again, that switch to polite phrasing that belied the sincere gratitude that B’Elanna was sensing from Seven. The Doctor had put it exactly right - she didn’t have her own vocabulary yet. “It’s not just the headache, there’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?” B’Elanna presses carefully.

Seven cocks her head to the side, searching B’Elanna’s brown eyes for safety. “The aliens that shot you feared me. It is probable given the circumstances that this society has encountered the Borg. The aliens may have been survivors of a Borg attack on that planet.”

Seven looks stricken with shame, as if she is somehow culpable by her past association with the Borg. The woman across from her looks so vulnerable that instinctively, B’Elanna is moved to reach over the table to squeeze her hand briefly. Seven looks confused at the touch.

“You do not think me a monster?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

There’s a building tension between them that grows in the silence broken only when Icheb and Naomi hover expectantly at the side of their table.

“We’re finished,” Naomi sings, clutching her PADD tight to her chest. “I think.”

“Perhaps you could ask the Lieutenant if she will look over your work? She is an expert on warp theory,” Seven says, masking any discomfort she’s feeling.

“I’d be honoured.” B’Elanna laughs out loud and shoots a look at Seven. “I did this equation in the first semester of the Academy! I think this is slightly more advanced than rudimentary.”

“I am the Captain’s Assistant,” Naomi proclaims proudly. “It’s essential that I’m able to advise on these matters.”

“At this rate, you’ll be running the ship before long, kiddo,” B’Elanna smiles. She’s impressed by the calculations of both students- Icheb is perhaps more diligent about writing out every single step in his working; Naomi sometimes leaps from one step to another, skipping the intermediate. She teaches them a silly mnemonic for the Cochrane Equation she learned long ago. They sit and talk about warp bubbles for a while and Neelix brings them all another round of tea.

Naomi pulls out a pad of paper and begins to draw. Naomi is pretty good at sketching- she shows Icheb how to shade faces in chiaroscuro to give the illusion of depth. B’Elanna looks across at Seven and sees a completely different woman than the one she’s known- engaging and almost playful. And if the conversation stalls or lapses, Naomi’s chatter pulls Seven back in.

“How come you came here to do your homework?” B’Elanna asks eventually.

“The computer said you were here,” Icheb starts to reply before a glance from Seven seems to cut him off.

He was such a guileless boy, and his partial admission causes B’Elanna to look with intrigue toward Seven, whose body language has tightened. She detects something through their link- not embarrassment exactly, more like vulnerability.

“Can we go to play Kadis Kot?” Naomi asks in a sing-song voice, which draws B’Elanna’s attention to her. A suspicious person might think the deflection was intentional.

“You may,” Seven replies, a little too hastily. Naomi beams and gives her artwork to Seven.

Once the children have left, B’Elanna fixes Seven with a look. “The computer said I was here?”

“Icheb suggested a change of scene might promote a more efficient environment to do homework in.” Seven’s eyes drifted down into her lap for a moment. Like Icheb, she was incapable of anything but honesty. “I have found in our increased interactions lately, that I enjoy your company. I believe the children have noticed this. Naomi suggested locating you, so that we could ‘hang out’ while they did their homework.”

“Smart kids. I like hanging out with you, too. I’m glad our interactions have increased,” she smiles, parroting Seven’s phrasing.

“Is this friendship?” Seven asks.

The question is unexpected. B’Elanna blinks and crosses her arms over her body, anticipating a need for self-protection. “What do you mean?”

“Since becoming an individual, I have experienced different forms of interpersonal relationship. Captain Janeway, The Doctor and Tuvok have each mentored me in their own ways. With the children, I feel affection and a desire to assist in their well-being and education but they are not my peers. Friendship, however, has eluded me. The crew are reluctant to spend time with me outside of their duties and I do not share many common experiences with them. But I believe that you and I have become friends. Do you concur with that assessment, Lieutenant?”

_ Do I concur with that assessment? _ B’Elanna repeats the question to herself. It’s so carefully phrased that one would be forgiven for assuming Seven would be untroubled by whatever answer she was given. But B’Elanna knows Seven too well to make that mistake now.

“Let’s see- you’ve saved my life. Twice. I’ve talked more about myself with you than I have with anyone in the last twenty years. We’re sharing the same quarters, regenerating together. So...” B’Elanna hugs herself rather tightly, as if trying to constrict herself from revealing too much of how she feels. It’s cowardly though, to invite Seven to draw her own conclusion like this, and besides, Seven will be aware that she’s holding something back through their connection. She wrests some control away from her self-preservation instinct and gives a straighter answer. “I don’t have many friends, I never have. It’s been hard to let people get close. It’s like what you said - I don’t have a bunch of common experiences with most people. I’ve always been an outsider and I’ve done some terrible things in the past,” B’Elanna trails off, lowering her eyes in shame.

“I have some familiarity with both of those,” Seven replies, ducking forwards slightly to catch B’Elanna’s eye again.

Despite herself, B’Elanna smiles. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. You didn’t bat an eye when I told you about blowing up that Cardassian earlier.”

“Bat an eye?” Seven queries.

“Not a phrase The Doctor has taught you yet?”

“No. Idioms are part of his  _ Advanced Conversational  _ syllabus. I have not progressed out of the  _ Basic Conversational _ course.”

“It means you didn’t react and judge me, even though I’d just said I’d vaporised a sentient being. Janeway and all the Starfleet officers are different. For them the ends never justify the means - that means even if the outcome is a good thing, it should not be done if it means doing a bad thing.”

“I have committed worse atrocities,” Seven says quietly.

“Hey, it’s not the same. You were a drone. You didn’t have a choice. I had a choice and I’d probably make the same choice again.” B’Elanna sits up properly. “I was such a  _ p’tahk _ to you for so long. I wish it hadn’t taken all the crazy stuff that’s happened for me to take the time to get to know you.”

“You curse in klingon,” Seven observes.

“Yeah. I don’t know why. Some words just taste better that way I guess,” B’Elanna smiles. “You know some of the worst things about me and you haven’t walked away. I’ve never had a friend quite like you.”

It goes quiet for a while again. There’s definitely an undercurrent of something between them, but its true nature eludes B’Elanna’s grasp.

“Can I see the picture?”

Hesitantly, Seven pushes the paper across the table. It’s a cute sketch. Naomi’s drawn Seven and her smiling- heads disproportionately bigger than their bodies. She’d normally feel self-conscious because her forehead ridges have been emphasised, but she sees that the same is true of Seven’s ocular implant, which is quirked upward. It’s captioned with their names and around the edges there’s a border of stars, squiggles and hearts. “She’s got your expression perfectly.”

Some clanging comes from the galley- it’s just Neelix shuttering the kitchen up. B’Elanna hadn’t noticed, but pretty much everyone else has cleared out of the Mess now. The crashing of pots and pans is probably a not so subtle hint that it’s time for them to head out of there too. Absently, B’Elanna tucks the picture into her pocket.

“Let’s go?” B’Elanna nearly added ‘ _home_ ’ to the end of her question. The word had hovered on the tip of her tongue, crouched like a skydiver waiting to fling herself out of a plane, but the moment passed her by. 

They stroll back to the cargo bay in silence- Seven seems preoccupied with her thoughts. When they get back B’Elanna casts a long look at her alcove. “This used to be Mezoti’s, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

It’s just one word, a dam keeping back all the words that B’Elanna knows are pushing for release. “You miss her.”

“All of them.” Seven’s lip quivers. “Especially her.”

“Wanna talk about her?”

“I do not know what to say. She was difficult-- and unique.” Seven doesn’t- or can’t- elaborate further, and B’Elanna doesn’t push for more. Not yet, at least.

“Sounds like someone I know.” B’Elanna smiles.


	11. Borg

B’Elanna and Seven are about to deliver their joint briefing to the senior officers on what they’ve learned about the transwarp coil that isn’t a transwarp coil and where their alien assailants may have come from. Despite having spent most of the last 24 hours in Seven’s company, and the convergence of their daily routines, B’Elanna hasn’t grown tired of it yet. She begins her briefing with the coil, which she has brought along as a visual aid.

“This, from the outside, is perfect- it really is. The materials, the dimensions are perfect. This must have been the outer casing of a real Borg transwarp coil. But on the inside it’s a different story.” She points to the ports on the casing. “These ports are for Borg drones to directly interface with this, for example, when doing maintenance or to connect the coil to a Borg system. That’s right isn’t it, Seven?”

“Yes,” Seven confirms.

“Now, the thing is, when that happens with this device, the drone that interfaces with it will get more than it bargained for. Someone has encoded this to download something that looks like Borg sub-routine, which gets networked to the other drones, but causes them to self-destruct.”

“Self-destruct?” Janeway sits forward on her chair, as does Chakotay, listening intently.

“You want to explain this bit?” B’Elanna asks Seven, for the first time ever not feeling professionally threatened by her. Quite the contrary- she realises they make a formidable team.

“There have been occasions in the history of the Borg Collective where species resistant to assimilation used biological or technological weapons that were effective against the Borg. Most drones retain a large proportion of their biological body after they have been assimilated and are therefore susceptible to some bacterial or viral pathogens. About a century ago, one species engineered a virus that could infect and kill Borg drones, which threatened to transmit through the Collective unchecked. The Borg adapted through the selective self-destruction of any infected ships and drones.”

“Hmm. Apoptosis,” The Doctor says.

“Doctor?”

“Many multicellular organisms have evolved a process in which specific cells ‘die’ either because they sense internal cell stress, or because they are responding to a signal from other cells. It is a protective adaptation.” He waggles his fingers. “Digits on the hands of humanoids are typically separated because of apoptosis during embryonic development.”

“Yes, I believe that analogy is apt. The Collective as a whole does function similarly to a complex organism. The self-destruction sub-routine provides the option to neutralise a threat by destroying one cube so that the rest of the Collective may continue.”

“This is a normal Borg process that has been weaponised by this device?” Janeway asks.

“Correct, Captain,” B’Elanna replies. “The code of the sub-routine has been tweaked- once it has been downloaded into a drone, there is no way to abort the self-destruction process. The drone will propagate the sub-routine to its matrix and from there to the rest of the drones on its ship. And then the ship will destroy itself to protect the rest of the Collective.”

“And so this is why we found that floating in the middle of the wreckage of a cube?”

“Yes, that is our conclusion.”

“Who built it?” Chakotay asks.

“That’s the mystery,” B’Elanna replies.

“The modifications to the Borg code are not trivial. The adjustments must have been a deliberate act,” Seven says. “When we encountered the aliens on the derelict cube, it appeared that they had some knowledge about this particular coil. They detected my Borg physiology, which I believe caused them to become hostile. I would tend to speculate that the aliens who attacked us built this device.”

“So who are they? Where are they from?” Chakotay asks.

Seven projects an image of a star system. One of the planets glows, indicating that this is the focus of her presentation. “This is a Class-M world, the fifth planet in a binary system approximately three light years from our current position. There is evidence of extensive industrialisation and indication of a warp-capable civilisation.” The projection whooshes into a close-up view of the planet’s surface. “As you can see, the surface has been damaged by weapons fire. The scans confirm the energy signature as Borg. None of the other planets in the system have any fabricated structures that would indicate humanoid life.”

“Are we close enough to scan for life forms?”

Seven’s face flickers with guilt. The change in expression lasts for barely a moment, but B’Elanna sees it and feels the intensity of it through the connection. She catches Seven’s eye and with nothing more than the merest movement of her eyebrows, communicates her intention to reply.

“We’re right on the edge of sensor range. The only life forms we can detect on the planet from here are Borg,” B’Elanna replies coolly.

“So the planet was assimilated?” Harry asks, wide-eyed. “It must have happened after you came onboard, Seven, right? Or you’d remember?”

“Correct. The Borg had not advanced into this territory when I was joined with them,” Seven replies, quietly.

“How long does it take to assimilate an entire planet?” Tom wonders aloud.

B’Elanna can tell that Seven is struggling to keep the timbre of her voice even. “It depends on many factors. How populous the planet is, how aggressive, or cunning, or resistant the species is. The long-range scans do not show other industrialised planets in this sector. An isolated world can be overrun in days.”

“But you think the aliens you encountered are survivors and possibly built this weapon to use against the Borg?” Janeway asks, steering the conversation in a different direction.

“Correct, Captain,” B’Elanna responds, deflecting attention away from Seven. “Since we haven’t detected anything else out here, the working assumption is that the aliens were originally from that planet.”

“Any ideas on how to find them?”

“No vessels detected on long-range sensors. I don’t even know how they got onto the derelict- they seemed to come out of nowhere.”

“Harry, Seven, I want you to keep a look-out for any clues. In the meantime, is there something that we can do with the coil? Use it to our advantage?”

“If we replicate more, I wondered whether we could use them in photon torpedoes?” B’Elanna says.

“Intriguing. What do you propose?” Tuvok asks.

“If we can fire a torpedo so that it doesn’t detonate on impact- so it just kinda lodges in a Borg cube, would a drone try to interface with it?”

Seven nods. “That would be the typical behaviour of a drone. One would be sent to investigate and assimilate the foreign object.”

“I can modify the torpedoes to accomplish this,” Tuvok replies.

“Is it possible to replicate more of these?” Chakotay asks.

“Yes, with some recalibration of the replicator’s matter-energy matrix,” Seven replies.

“Do it,” Janeway commands, dismissing the officers. “A moment, B’Elanna and Seven,” she adds and waits until the room has cleared. “Excellent work, you two,” she praises them both.

“Thanks, Captain,” B’Elanna acknowledges.

“How are you both doing with all of this? I know I’m putting a lot on both of you right now and I want you to know you can tell me if it’s too much. Seven- The Doctor reported that you have been having headaches.”

“Correct, Captain,” Seven replies. “For the present, they are not serious. I am resisting the strengthening of the neural link between the Lieutenant and I. In the ordinary assimilation process, the consciousnesses of the individuals cease to be distinct- there is a merging into a collective consciousness. Although this is not an ordinary assimilation, I cannot be certain that this merger will not complete if sufficient time passes. My neurotransmitter levels are likely slightly elevated because of the effort involved in maintaining a degree of separation.”

“We need to keep an eye on this,” Janeway says warily.

“The Doctor continues to monitor the situation. The Lieutenant is recovering well. The neural link will not be permanent.”

“Nevertheless, I do not want you to ignore symptoms if they get any worse,” the Captain says with a sort of motherly sternness.

“I’ll make sure she looks after herself,” B’Elanna offers spontaneously.

Seven inhales patiently. “I am capable of looking after myself. However, I shall comply with any requests from the Lieutenant in that regard.”

Janeway’s eyes twinkle. “Remarkable.”

“What is, Captain?”

“How quickly things can change. It wasn’t so long ago that I was constantly afraid you two would come to blows over the warp engines.” She puts her hand on Seven’s shoulder. “And you have had no other problems?”

“No Captain.”

“My door is always open, to both of you.”

B’Elanna stretches her arms above her head contentedly. Enhancing the precision of the engineering replicator to be able to copy down to the very last molecule the fake transwarp coil is a tricksy but strangely satisfying engineering problem. She’s almost cracked it- there’s just a little variance she’s getting with a couple of the polymer components. Seven will probably have an idea on how to fix it, she thinks.

Her mind drifts back to last night’s unimatrix. It had looked like the grounds of Starfleet Academy where she used to like wandering around the gardens between classes (and sometimes during classes) before she’d flamed out and joined the Maquis. She took Seven to the old willow tree that stood on the bank of a picturesque brook. B’Elanna had sat down, her back resting against its knotted trunk just as she used to do, peering out between the curtains of its branches. She persuaded Seven to sit beside her and told her a bunch of stories from her cadet days while their shoulders rubbed together and the wind rustled in the canopy above.

“ _ Do you miss this place? _ ” Seven had asked.

“ _ Not really. I was restless, never quite fit in. I was always looking for someone or something to push against or fight. Self-sabotage, you know? _ ”

“ _ Self-sabotage? _ ”

“ _ For a while, there was nothing I wanted more than to be a Starfleet officer. I worked so hard to get in here and then pretty much as soon as I arrived I did everything I could to screw it up. _ ”

“ _ Why _ ?”

“ _ I dunno _ ,” B’Elanna replied. But the unimatrix had a strange way of loosening her tongue, to say things she wouldn’t say out there in the  _ real _ world. She glances sideways at Seven and then fixes her eyes on the rustling leaves. “ _ Anyone or anything good in my life has always left me. Easier to burn it down myself before I get too attached. _ ”

“ _ Curious _ .”

“ _ What is? _ ”

“ _ If you burn everything down, how can you know it would have been lost? It is not a logical position to hold. _ ”

“ _ I’m not logical _ ,” B’Elanna replied sharply- ever-sensitive that by relying on feeling rather than logic made her somehow less sophisticated than most other people. Especially Seven. She had shrugged and stood up then, stepping out from under the drooping branches within which she had started to feel claustrophobic. She picked up a rock and threw it into the stream, watching the ripple effect grow outward.

Seven emerged from the canopy behind her. “ _ I did not intend to upset you. _ ”

B’Elanna nodded and changed the subject. “ _ I’m sorry I keep dragging you to places from my past. You must be getting sick of it. _ ”

“ _ Do not apologise. It has given me a unique opportunity to get to know and understand you better _ ,” Seven had replied. “ _ I regret that I do not have a past that I can show you in return _ .”

“ _ You have the present _ ,” B’Elanna said. She turned away from Seven and picked up a pebble- its edges smoothed- and skipped it across the water. Under her breath, a latent hope escaped in a whisper so quiet that Seven couldn’t possibly have heard her, “ _ and the future _ .”

Seven bent down next to her, finding a near-perfect skipping stone. She turned it over in her hand contemplatively before releasing it across the water. “ _ The future. I should like that. _ ”

Her reverie is cracked wide open by the blaring of the red alert klaxon.

_ “Janeway to Engineering.” _

“Torres here, Captain.”

_ “We’ve got a Borg cube on long range sensors, heading towards us on an intercept course. I’ll need everything you’ve got.” _

“On it.” She barks out orders to the crew. “Carey, what’s our velocity?”

“Warp nine point three and holding.”

“We’re gonna need more,” B’Elanna mutters. In her mind’s eye, she visualises the propulsion system. What tweaks could she make on the fly, she asks herself. Her fingers dance over the console, making multiple adjustments. The implant in her arm is amazing- it’s letting her implement changes as quickly as she thinks of them. Suddenly, she’s thrown across the deck by the ship lurching starboard.

“We’re taking fire,” Vorik announces from his monitoring console.

_ No shit _ , B’Elanna thinks to herself as she scrambles back towards her station. The weapon blast had been designed to slow them, not destroy them. If they were destroyed, they could not be assimilated, and that would be inefficient. Sure enough, the power had drained from the engines, destabilising the warp field. The Borg would keep firing these charges until Voyager was paralysed, then they would sap the shields, then they would swarm aboard.

“Divert all non-essential power to the engines,” she orders.

It’s a desperate dance they do across space. Voyager is more manoeuvrable, and B’Elanna can picture Tom Paris laying in evasive course corrections to try and shake this cube. But the cube is like a shark, and Voyager is the chum in the water. 

Another volley of charges. Voyager groans, her engines stuttering and spluttering. Everyone is hurled across the deck again. B’Elanna grabs the hand that helps her to her feet. It belongs to Seven, who wasn’t on duty in Engineering. There’s no time to talk about what she’s doing there now, but B’Elanna is more than glad that she is, and squeezes her hand before letting go.

“What’s our status?”

“Warp six point eight, and losing velocity. The Borg are gaining on us,” Carey reports, stress causing his voice to rise at the end. Another charge hit the ship. “Warp six!”

It was a torturous hunt. Each charge knocked Voyager off her stride while the Borg pursued relentlessly. They would just keep on gaining ground until their tractor beam could pluck Voyager out of space and into the Borg’s grasp. The Borg had a voracious, insatiable appetite for new technology and individuals to consume and suck dry. Voyager was a particularly tasty morsel compared to the usual Delta Quadrant fare.

“We need to modulate the shield harmonics,” Seven states.

“Agreed.” B’Elanna and Seven work in tandem, their fingers a blur over the console they shared. An effortless understanding sprung up between them, and they quickly developed an algorithm to rotate the shield frequencies to mitigate some of the weapons fire Voyager was taking. But the cube does not stop. It does not feel fatigue. It does not feel remorse for its prey.

The cube is close enough now to fire a particle beam weapon at Voyager. The beam scythes through the shields like a hot knife through butter and tears into the hull. Voyager quivers at the breach. Every alarm is blaring. Plasma conduits overheat; the console next to theirs blows out, spraying them with shattered glass and twisted metal.

Warp containment is failing. If B’Elanna can’t re-establish containment or eject the core, the ship will explode. She shouts at the top of her lungs for all personnel to evacuate Engineering because that is standard procedure. She cannot leave- she must stay and try to save the core. “You too, Seven!”

“I am not leaving,” Seven shouts back over the top of the Computer’s warnings about practically every system. “It is inefficient to discuss it.”

“Computer, silent warnings only!” B’Elanna yells, and the cacophony stops. There was no point arguing about insubordination now. “If that beam hits us again, we’re done.”

“We must reverse the hull polarity.”

B’Elanna catches on quickly. “Because that will cause the beam to feed back and hit the Borg.” It’s unbearable pressure to work under when each keystroke has to be perfect because the next attack could come at any moment. Her mouth is dry, and her fingers tremble. She fully expects to die. She hopes that when the moment comes it’s quick. Contemplation of death brought forth strange thoughts- she wondered if  _ Sto’Vo’Kor _ was real, and what the hell she was going to say to Kahless if she met him there. She wished all the people who convinced her that she wasn’t Starfleet material could see her now- remaining at her post until the last even though the odds were hopelessly against success. At least she wouldn’t be alone, she thinks, glancing at Seven.

A whirring sound fills B’Elanna with dread. Two Borg drones beamed into Engineering, their transporters able to exploit the weakened shields. She grabs a phaser and fires at the first drone, whose cybernetic legs crumple beneath its torso. It lies there motionless, neutralised. In the second it takes to take aim and fire again, the second drone has already adapted to the phaser frequency. The orange energy beam is dissipated harmlessly by some type of forcefield that activates on the Borg’s body.

The drone is a huge, hulking thing, standing at least one head taller than Seven. It advances on her in that distinctly Borg gait- ungainly strides towards an inevitable objective. Whatever species it had been assimilated from was one with a muscular constitution, although not much of its organic body remained- cybernetic exoskeletal structures had been woven into, or entirely replaced most of its body parts. She throws the phaser at its head, perhaps blunt force trauma will succeed where an energy blast failed. The weapon bounces off of its skull. The drone actually stops to look at the makeshift projectile, perhaps curious about a potentially new type of threat that its successors could adapt to. In that instant, Seven comes up behind the drone. She is unarmed, and the drone spins around quickly. Its cybernetic arm connects with the side of her head making a dull thud on impact. The force knocks her to the floor.

Something primal is unleashed in B’Elanna when she hears the sickening blow. She roars and flies straight at the drone, striking it with her fists. Her augmented arm seems to be landing some meaningful blows. The drone grabs her around the throat and with one hand lifts her into the air. She struggles to breathe and her vision becomes a narrow tunnel. Its other arm raises up. She sees its assimilation tubules extend towards her. She claws, scratches, kicks and bites in a futile attempt to break free. Just before the serpentine tubules sink into her flesh, Seven grabs the assimilation arm, holding it back with all of her enhanced strength. At an impasse, it takes a moment for the hive mind to come to a consensus for what this drone should do next. It releases Torres, who falls to the floor choking and clutching her bruised neck. The drone flails the arm that had been holding B’Elanna and again connects with Seven’s face with sufficient force to beat her to the floor. It lumbers towards B’Elanna’s fallen saviour. Adrenaline blocking out the pain, B’Elanna pushes herself up off the ground, and jumps on the drone’s back. Its neck looks fleshy- a weak spot maybe. She puts a stranglehold on the drone, and applies all of the force that she can. It wheels around, trying to throw her off, but somehow she keeps tightening and tightening and tightening the pressure of her arms until its neck snaps with a wet crunch.

B’Elanna scrambles to Seven to help her up, but the Borg weapon hits the ship again. Voyager rolls to the side. B’Elanna’s eyes widened in anticipation of destruction, but there was only a high-pitched whine. Another panel blows out somewhere behind them, belching out acrid smoke, stinging their eyes. The noise drills into her head, louder and louder, and then it is gone. They must have reversed the hull polarity in time.

“The Borg cube has been disabled,” Seven affirms, in a tone washed by relief.

“We still need to stabilise the containment field and get those shields back up.”

“I had not forgotten,” Seven replies, and B’Elanna can’t tell whether this is a mere statement of fact or a particularly arid joke.

When it is all over, B’Elanna puffs out her cheeks and leans against the console to gather her breath. “You’re bleeding.” She fusses over a series of gashes to Seven’s head caused by the flying shrapnel. There is a stippling of dried or drying blood on Seven’s fair skin; some crimson clumps in matted streaks in her blonde hair. The redolent smell of blood fills B’Elanna’s nostrils, overpowering the delicate vanillary metallic tang she associates with Seven. “Hold still.”

Seven winces as B’Elanna gently uses the cuff of her uniform to wipe her face, checking for any embedded fragments of glass. There is some swelling around her cheekbones. To B’Elanna’s great relief the injuries, though bloody, are superficial. Without thinking, she brings her thumb to her lips to moisten it, and then to Seven’s brow to clean a smear of scarlet. Just like her own mother used to do when she’d come in covered in grime from playing outside on Kessik IV. ‘Playing outside’ was a euphemism- what it really meant was running away and hiding from the human kids so that they couldn’t bully her.  _ If you hide they can’t hurt you.  _ She used to climb trees and huddle in their branches. Sometimes the other kids would find her and throw sticks at her while she was in her perch, but she always climbed higher than they could throw. When it got dusky, she would slink home under the veil of night, her face stained by a mixture of sweat, tears, and dirt.  _ You’re my brave little warrior,  _ her mother would say as she wiped away the stains.

“You’re okay,” B’Elanna says, scarcely above a whisper. They are alone in Engineering, having just averted certain disaster. She’s holding Seven’s face tenderly in her hands while the dust literally settles around them. If there had been some stirring background music, the scene might as well have been torn from the pages of one of Tom’s godawful holoadventures; one where the hero always gets the girl. Always  _ kisses _ the girl.

Why had that idea popped into her head right now? Is Seven aware of what she is thinking? She drops her hands, which still tremble with the dark delight of killing the drone.

She has never felt closer to her klingon heritage than she does just now. Klingons immortalised their history in epic poems; countless verses captured the bloody nature of battle and countless more captured the fucking that always followed the fighting. For klingons, the scent of blood could be an aphrodisiac as potent as the sweetest perfume. Blood was life and death and sex and she has never understood that better than right in this moment where Seven’s blood is smeared on her sleeve and encrusted under her fingernails. She closes her eyes and drinks in the smell of it, as it fuels a lustiness that is as terrifying as it is compelling.

When she opens her eyes again, Seven is looking back at her. B’Elanna’s desires surely lie naked before that blue gaze.

“You stayed with me,” B’Elanna murmurs. 

“I could not leave you.”

Inexorably, their bodies inch closer together. Seven’s hand, the one criss-crossed by the mesh, reaches up to cup her cheek. It is warm. She turns her face so that her lips press against Seven’s palm.

_ “Bridge to Engineering. Is everyone alright down there?” _

In a Pavlovian response to the sound of Janeway’s voice, B’Elanna breaks away from Seven. “Torres here, Captain. Seven has minor injuries. Two drones beamed into Engineering during the attack, we neutralised them. I ordered the rest of the engineering crew to evacuate when it looked like we were about to lose the warp containment field.”

“Captain, warp containment is now stabilised. A number of EPS manifolds and primary power couplings have overloaded. Impulse engines are available. Warp engines are damaged. I would not recommend exceeding warp four. Shields are holding at seventeen percent.” Seven distills the salient points from the status panel to flesh out a report.

_ “Get repair teams organised. Restoring the shields is top priority.” _

“Aye, Captain.”

The intrusion of reality had been like a bucket of ice cold water quenching whatever type of passion had been inflamed. When B’Elanna turns to Seven, she’s horrified by the purple bruising that has bloomed on the side of her face. She reaches into the emergency medkit for a dermal regenerator. “Do you need medical treatment?”

“I do not think a visit to Sick Bay will make me feel better.”

B’Elanna parses that sentence carefully. It is a  _ non sequitur _ to her question, and she wonders whether there is an implicit suggestion that there is something that would make Seven feel better. She is silent as she runs the regenerator over the contusions, heartened when the injuries fade away. Seven reaches up and covers her fingers with her hand. She takes a sharp intake of breath- and all that oxygen reignites her smouldering desire. But all Seven does is take the regenerator from her grasp to heal the bruising along her neck.


	12. The Raven

B’Elanna has set about the repairs with all the zeal of someone whose life had hung on the end of a drone’s arm mere hours before. Her mind is a whirl. Nothing had happened between her and Seven- well  _ something _ definitely had happened, but nothing that couldn’t be taken back, or laughed off, or disguised as camaraderie.

All her energy is spent- she’s crawled around on her hands and knees for hours fixing up everything the Borg broke. She should be falling into her alcove to regenerate, but her mind is too fevered to rest. She calls on the memory of holding Seven’s face in her hands, and then she improvises around it. She imagines what might have happened if she had stroked Seven’s cheek or pulled her close enough to feel her breath on her face. She would have kissed her- that’s what she would have done- just hard enough so that there would be no mistaking her intent and just soft enough so that when she pulled away, Seven would follow her to recapture her lips.

A sound forms and escapes from her throat without permission. It shakes her back into reality.  _ Why the fuck am I fantasising about Seven _ ? From somewhere deep inside comes a whisper that she strains to hear.  _ You know why _ .

B’Elanna’s beyond tired, but she keeps hunting down more things to fix up. She’s too afraid to go to the cargo bay to regenerate. She doesn’t trust herself not to do something stupid. Her emotions are too powerful, too volatile; emotions made her vulnerable, they had always made her vulnerable. She has to flee, to hide.  _ If you hide, they can’t hurt you _ .

Necessity in the end wins out, as it always does. With her eyelids drooping and her muscles heavy, she drags herself back to the cargo bay.

Seven was already regenerating, suffused in the glow from the backlit alcove. B’Elanna thinks she looks like a figure immortalised in a renaissance painting. She allows herself a moment to drink in the tableau before positioning herself into her alcove. She taps the keypad to initiate the cycle, blinks and opens her eyes into the unimatrix.

B’Elanna’s on a ship. It’s unfamiliar to her; small, the design is dated. It must be from Seven’s mind. Something about this place is foreboding. She understands her unease when her eyes fall upon a plaque identifying the ship as  _ The Raven _ . This was the ship Seven’s parents had flown about the galaxy on; the ship their little girl knew as home. It was on this ship that the little girl had been brutalised by the Borg and turned into a drone. Unconsciously, B’Elanna touches her neck, where the drone had grabbed her. She tries to imagine the terror felt by Annika Hansen who watched her parents be helplessly carted off to their doom. She finds she cannot. The air hangs still and oppressive.

She feels like an intruder in this place and wants to wake herself up out of the regeneration cycle, but she doesn’t want to leave without Seven. There’s no answer when she calls out her name. The space that housed the main controls of the ship was empty. There were two doors either side of a workstation; probably the cabins. One door seemed to be stuck ajar. The other was slid shut. There was a hand-drawn sign made with bright crayons on real paper that said  _ Annika’s Room _ with a charming self-portrait of a little girl with long blonde plaits tied with blue ribbons. It’s the one patch of light in this darkness.

There is a button next to the door, B’Elanna presses it and a musical phrase that she recognises from her childhood but couldn’t place chimes out. There is no answer, but she hears rustling inside. She knocks softly at first, and then a little harder. “It’s me.”

Seven doesn’t open the door. B’Elanna’s worried; she hears an unmistakable sob that tugs at the strings around her heart. She lays her palm flat against the door. “Please open the door, Seven.”

“I cannot.”

“Are you okay? Talk to me.” Ragged sounds of Seven’s hitching breath carry clearly through the barrier between them.  _ Go to her,  _ the voice inside her urges. She soon isolates the door-locking mechanisms on the ship’s console. There’s a click and the door slides open.

The room was near pitch-black. B’Elanna steps inside with a sense of unease, blinking rapidly for her eyes to adjust. She feels around for the lighting controls and chases away some of the darkness. In the far corner, back against the wall was Seven. She was sitting with her knees drawn in tightly together, her shoulders quaking. B’Elanna can’t bear it, she rushes to Seven’s side, and wraps her arms around her.

Seven is murmuring something so quietly that B’Elanna can’t make it out. She cradles and rocks Seven in her arms. “What happened?”

“I have been unable to stop thinking about the drone that nearly killed you. About what might have happened.”

That must be why the unimatrix manifested as this place, B’Elanna realises. Being attacked by the Borg must have kindled these terrible memories. Her grip on Seven grows tighter. “I’m here,” she soothes.

“I was hiding out there under the desk when they came,” Seven says. Her voice sounds oddly disconnected, as if she’s speaking from another time. “I saw them take my mother and my father. My mother screamed, and I saw her feet leave the ground like yours did today. Her body went limp and a drone dragged her behind him. I remember her boots squeaked on the floor. I tried to stay quiet. I covered my mouth with my hand. I bit into it so hard that I could taste blood. And then an arm reached down and grabbed me. Something stuck into my neck. It made my skin freeze.” She shivers.

For all of the violence and death that B’Elanna has seen in her own life, she is unable to comprehend the horrors Seven endured here. Seven’s eyes are sunken back into her head, her cheeks gaunt, and she rubs the palm she had bitten into as a child in a way that is both frantic and absent-minded.

B’Elanna knows how pernicious trauma is. How it lurks in the shadows of the mind, waiting to snare its victim. What unnerves B’Elanna most is the hollowness of Seven’s voice; as if all emotion had been winnowed out of it. Instinctively, she brings the distressed hands apart, stopping the nervous rubbing, and holds them in her own. “Seven,” she reaches out with her voice. Her words fail her then, like they can’t catch up to her feelings just yet. Instead she leans forward and presses a kiss to Seven’s forehead. Maybe that’s even better than words just now.

Seven just looks at her, and B’Elanna worries that she has made an awful mistake. A few pregnant seconds pass, in which all B’Elanna can hear is the beating of her heart, before Seven speaks.

“I might have lost you today.”

B’Elanna takes one of Seven’s hands and places it against her heart so that she could feel it beat, faster than normal, but strong and vital. “I’m right here.”

“I— ” Seven trails off, looking down at the ground. “You have become special to me, B’Elanna.”

It’s the first time she remembers Seven saying her name. It sounds sweeter from her lips somehow. Blue eyes bore into her.

“You are special to me, too.”

The unimatrix appears to shimmer around them, and although neither of them notice at first, the walls of  _ The Raven _ melt and the character of the unimatrix is different.

B’Elanna blinks first. She stands up and helps Seven to her feet. “What happened, why does it look different now?”

Seven takes in the surroundings- they are on top of the hill they had climbed in the first unimatrix they had created. The sun is rising and hitting them with warming rays. “I do not know. But it appears we have the power to change things.”


	13. The Valjean

Over the next few days, B’Elanna and Seven slip into a comfortable routine, even though they don’t talk about what happened in _The Raven_ unimatrix, or about what exactly _special_ means. Things have a way of looking different outside the unimatrix when real life intrudes. For her part, B’Elanna feels freer inside the unimatrix than she ever has outside.

Their first task each day is to report to Sick Bay where The Doctor scans them both. Every morning, The Doctor finds that B’Elanna’s neural tissue regenerates a little more, and Seven’s headaches are a little worse, although Seven insists that they do not prevent her from operating sufficiently well. The Doctor reassures them that soon there will be no need for them to be connected. They don’t talk about that, either.

After the daily visit to Sick Bay, it’s to the Mess Hall for breakfast before starting their shifts. They always take the turbolift together. Astrometrics is on deck eight, so Seven always gets out first, telling B’Elanna to ‘ _have a pleasant day_ ’ to which B’Elanna replies, ‘ _you, too_ ’. B’Elanna wonders sometimes, when the turbolift doors slide closed, why this unremarkable ritual makes her smile so much that her cheeks hurt. The only answer she can think of is that it belongs to them.

Voyager had been so badly damaged by the Borg attack that the only option Janeway had was to limp into a nebula to repair. B’Elanna increasingly found reasons to need Seven in Engineering, and Seven was increasingly less resistant to leaving Astrometrics. Most of the crew were surprised that the old animus did not rear its head between these two erstwhile rivals. Some could scarcely believe they had not come to figurative, if not literal, blows in the pressure-cooker environment that they were working in.

Rumours reached B’Elanna of a ship-wide betting pool on how many hours it would be before one of them dangled the other off the catwalk in Engineering, much to her amusement. When she discovered that the stakes were replicator rations, she joked with Seven that perhaps they ought to stage a fight and clear up the winnings.

But there were a few crew members who were not the least bit phased by this new-found friendship. Neelix, who prided himself on knowing the needs of the crew before they did, always had a pot of herbal tea ready for them when they took their breaks together in the Mess Hall. They would sit opposite each other at what had become their table where they could gaze into the depths of the nebula. Naomi Wildman, who had been the very first person on Voyager to take a shine to Seven, would visit the cargo bay most nights. Seven and the kids, as B’Elanna called them, were becoming moulded into their own little proto-family. The kids taught B’Elanna how to play Kadis Kot, and begged her for scary klingon stories.

And when Naomi would go home to sleep, Icheb would say his polite goodnights, and then B’Elanna would smile at Seven and tilt her head towards their alcoves. She would blink into a new unimatrix; some place conjured from her memories, revealing something new about her to Seven. So natural did this new way of life feel that she forgot that it had ever been any different, and that it would not and could not be this way forever.

Tonight has followed their now familiar routine, but there’s a weird energy that’s ebbed and flowed between them all evening. B’Elanna’s eyes twinkle at Seven. “Time for bed?” It sounds more flirtatious than she had intended.

“Shall I tuck you in?” Was Seven flirting back?

When B’Elanna opens her eyes into the unimatrix, she claps her hands together in nostalgic delight. It’s her old Maquis ship. She’s in the engine room. Her engine room.

“Where are we?”

“My old ship.”

“The _Valjean_?” Seven asks.

B’Elanna’s eyebrows quirk upward in surprise that Seven knows the name.

“I researched the biographies of the crew to inform my efficiency analyses,” Seven responds by way of explanation.

 _Efficiency analyses_. That was what had brought them onto a collision course what seemed like a lifetime ago. They had collided alright, but instead of being broken, they had cleaved fast to one another. “So you know everything about everyone?”

“Not everyone. I invested more time researching some members of the crew than others,” Seven replies evenly. “I wanted to identify talents among the crew that have not been utilised effectively.”

“You invested more time researching my background?”

“I did,” Seven replies.

“Why?”

“You are intriguing.”

“Intriguing, huh?” B’Elanna repeats, hoping to read exactly what Seven meant by that. Unfortunately, Seven has mastered a degree of control over how much of her feelings leak through their connection. “You ever think about just talking to people?”

“Would you have been receptive to such a conversation with me?”

B’Elanna smiles a little sadly. “A couple of weeks ago? Probably not.” She pauses, considering that she could count on fingers how many days it had been since Seven had gone from being an irritation to being indispensable to her life. “But now? You can ask me anything.”

Seven studies B’Elanna closely and thinks for a moment. “Are these clothes standard Maquis issue?”

In this unimatrix, they are both wearing the tan trousers and tank top combination that B’Elanna had worn pretty much every day of her resistance fighter career. It wasn’t a uniform as such, but it had been practical. Seven is also wearing a jacket, the collar of which is half-up, half-down. B’Elanna mused that if there was a holonovel chronicling the exploits of a dashing and charismatic Maquis rebel, that character might very well look as Seven did now. Well, perhaps with one tiny adjustment, she thinks. She steps forward and straightens the errant collar, popping it up so that it sits just beneath Seven’s jawline. “It’s the epitome of resistance chic.”

The air around them felt positively heavy. B’Elanna’s hands had come to rest on the lapels of Seven’s jacket, attracted by some invisible force like gravity or magnetism. Unbidden, her mind wandered to speculate on what would happen if she tugged on the jacket, if she pulled Seven’s lips closer to hers. But she’s not ready, not yet.

Seven takes a half-step backwards, maybe to give herself some breathing room. She thrusts her hands deep into the pockets on the pants- an experience her biosuits did not offer her. “Functional,” she approves. She taps one of the workstations, analysing the outputs of the idiosyncratic configurations that B’Elanna had invented for survival against the Cardassians.

Looking at engineering configurations was an obvious distraction from the needs building between them, but equally it was a distraction they obviously needed.

“It’s not my best work,” B’Elanna says. She had been far more instinctive and impulsive an engineer before Voyager- prepared to sacrifice the safe operation of her engines for more power in the skirmishes they engaged in- with the expectation that just about every system would need to be patched up on the fly.

“I was not appraising the quality of your work. I was simply admiring it. The odds of this ship, with a crew of volunteers, many of whom lacked training, surviving against a vastly superior Cardassian force, outmaneuvering the Starfleet patrols, and being transported to the Delta Quadrant, were miniscule. Yet it did. You are an incredible engineer.”

The unqualified praise leaves B’Elanna with an acute tingling sensation. She rubs the back of her neck bashfully. “You’re better.”

“That is not true. I have the collective knowledge of thousands of species; an advantage that you do not possess. Everything that you do is the fruit of your intelligence and creativity.” There is both sincerity and sadness in Seven’s voice when she speaks. And then there is a silence in place of a thought that Seven can not verbalise.

“You know, you can tell me anything,” B’Elanna presses gently.

“Your scans today- your rate of improvement is excellent. It will not be long before The Doctor can reverse the assimilation and extract the nanoprobes.” Seven pauses and suddenly finds the cuffs on her jacket very interesting. “We will be severed.”

 _Severed_ had such a clinical finality. It sends a shudder through B’Elanna. She said nothing, but her eyes encouraged Seven to continue.

“When I was severed from the Borg Collective, I lost all of their voices. Millions of voices just gone. The silence was overwhelming. Somehow I think that losing you, a single individual, will be worse.”

“You’re not losing me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You have previously expressed a certainty that once severed, things would ‘ _return to normal_ ’.”

B’Elanna had said exactly that, just a few days ago, but it may as well have been in a different life. She remembers how Seven had stiffened and quickly absented herself from the conversation- had she been worried about losing B’Elanna’s voice even then? “I don’t want them to,” she said emphatically. “Do you?”

“No. Our normal interaction is no longer sufficient.”

B’Elanna lifted Seven’s chin. “Hey, look at me. You’re stuck with me, assimilation or not.” Those blue eyes are like a tractor beam. She raises herself onto tiptoes to draw nearer to Seven. Close enough to feel her breath on her cheek. It’s electric. Her fingertips touch Seven’s face. She trembles when Seven copies her.

Her eyes flutter closed when her lips press against Seven’s. She kisses her tenderly yet tentatively. She’s never kissed a woman before. Seven doesn’t move a muscle. B’Elanna draws back, fearing that she has made a dreadful mistake, that she has misread the situation. But it’s desire, not regret, that plays over Seven’s face. She strokes B’Elanna’s cheeks, her thumb runs over red lips. “B’Elanna.”

B’Elanna’s hand moves behind Seven’s neck. They kiss again with open mouths and Seven’s hands get tangled in B’Elanna’s hair. If Seven had been still before, it must only have been because she was experiencing something new and adapting. The kiss deepens when B’Elanna winds her fingers in blonde hair, pulling Seven closer. Her tongue slides into Seven’s mouth. Their whole bodies are involved in the kiss. Breaths come faster, accompanied by whimpers as soft as snowflakes.

“Seven,” B’Elanna whispers, her hands coming to rest on the lapels once more. A wellspring of emotions streams through her. So many feelings all at once; she feels like she’s bobbing helplessly like a cork carried among whitewater rapids. Part of her wants to shuck Seven of the jacket, of all her clothes, and part of her is terrified. But for the most part what she wants is to keep kissing this woman, here in this place that exists for only the two of them. Her eyelids flutter closed, anticipating the softness of lips that never come to meet hers.


	14. Severed

When she opens her eyes, she might scream. The regeneration cycle had completed at the worst possible moment. She stands on the dais of the alcove, her heart thumping inside her chest. The unimatrix imbued her with the ability to connect with and express her feelings whenever she was inside it, but everytime she awoke, it would slip away like sand through her fingers.  There is so much she wants to say to Seven, but all of the words get tangled up inside of her.  Seven is silent too, as though she is running a series of simulations to work out which greeting was socially appropriate for their altered relationship status, if indeed anything had changed. She is standing with her hands clasped behind her back, expressionless, and unreadable.

It’s all so surreal- in absence of words or touch, the kiss fades as if it were day turning to night, and B’Elanna starts to fret over whether it actually happened at all. Perhaps it didn’t; perhaps it was just a figment of her mind, a wishverse she had made for herself. Or perhaps it did, but only because the unimatrix had weaved a strange spell over them. Maybe Seven was already thinking better of it; maybe that’s why she is standing there stiff as a board, averting her eyes from meeting her gaze directly.

“We should attend Sick Bay.” Seven says, finally, clinging to routine.

“Okay.”

“I’m sure you’re both relieved to be here,” The Doctor says breezily. He’s misjudged the mark for his bedside manner, but B’Elanna hasn’t even noticed. In little more than a week her relationship with Seven has gone from thinly-veiled hostility to friend to whatever the hell they are now, and her head is spinning. The Doctor is still talking, “You probably can’t wait to be back to normal. I’m pleased to say that I can reverse the assimilation today.”

That jolts her into the present. “What?”

“Lieutenant, your neurological damage has healed. There’s no longer any need for the nanoprobes. I thought you’d be, at the very least, mildly happy.”

B’Elanna’s eyes dart between The Doctor and Seven like those of a spooked horse.

“Do you have to do it?” B’Elanna’s surprised to hear herself say those words. The Doctor’s eyebrows raise as high, it seems, as his bald pate. Even Seven’s ocular implant twitches in an unusually obtuse fashion.

“Err,” The Doctor clears his throat and patiently explains. “If I do nothing your body will continue to be modified by implants. Your biological matter will be replaced over time with even more cybernetic components. If you delay the procedure for too long, it will become impossible to restore your biology. And more than that, despite her stoicism, Seven’s headaches appear to be getting worse and I simply have no idea what the long-term risks to her are.”

“To Seven?”

“Seven’s neurotransmitters are now significantly higher than the normal range. Long-term elevation of dopamine could have potentially dangerous psychological effects. Despite Seven’s assurances that the headaches are tolerable for the moment, I cannot see a benefit in delaying this procedure.” He softens his voice considerably. “I am confident the procedure to sever the connection and reverse the assimilation will not harm either of you. I have performed it before in more trying circumstances. There is nothing to worry about, Lieutenant.”

“I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.”

The Doctor knits his brows together in a deep frown. “The Captain wanted to be apprised of any unusual behavioural or psychological changes. Is there some reason that you seem to be reluctant for the procedure to occur?”

“No, but--”

“May I speak to Lieutenant Torres for a minute?” Seven interjects gently in a kind of girlish tone that B’Elanna hasn’t heard before- it must have some magically persuasive resonance because The Doctor smiles indulgently at her and busies himself in his office.

“Have I gone insane? We did- I mean, we were- on the  _ Valjean _ \- I didn’t dream it did I-” B’Elanna punctuates the air with staccato allusions to the night before.

“Yes.”

B’Elanna sighs, relieved that she hasn’t actually gone mad, but also confused and hurt by the monosyllabic response. She can tell from the heavy pause that Seven has feelings she’s trying to figure an articulation for. She strains to catch any leakage of what they might be through their connection, but Seven must be working hard to prevent her thoughts from developing any porosity.

“Just  _ ‘yes’ _ ? Nothing else to say?” Her tone is challenging even though she doesn’t mean it to be.

Seven’s back stiffens. “No,” she replies. She glances meaningfully towards The Doctor’s office. “There are things I wish to say to you, B’Elanna, but not here.”

There’s gentleness in the way Seven uses her name, and it soothes some of the pain. “I’m not ready for this,” she says.

Seven casts a long look at B’Elanna. She presses her hand to B’Elanna’s arm, just above the elbow. Beneath the uniform are nobbly metallic protrusions from her body. Seven’s hand trails down, bumping over more implants. It’s faintly shocking to B’Elanna just how much cybernetic adaptation the nanoprobes have made; there have been little changes to her body day by day, but until now she hasn’t considered the sum of those parts. Seven squeezes B’Elanna’s grey hand all too briefly, and perhaps the gesture is intended only to draw B’Elanna’s attention to the large implant on the back of her hand that has sprouted silvery tendrils.

“It was inevitable that this day would come,” Seven says, in a tone laden with ambivalence.

B’Elanna searches Seven’s face and sees the weariness around her eyes, and the tightness in her muscles from tolerating the headaches. And suddenly she realises it’s selfish of her for wanting to stay in this state. Before she can reply, The Doctor, a holographic being with a surprisingly acute need for attention and a distinct lack of patience, pops out from behind the office partition. “How are we doing in here?”

B’Elanna isn’t able to disguise a scowl. “You said there could be a risk to Seven if we’re not sev-- " the word refuses to come out, "if you don’t reverse the assimilation?”

“To both of you.”

“What exactly is involved?”

“I will monitor both of your neural outputs. You, Lieutenant, will be anaesthetised. The first step is to deactivate your neural link with Seven. I will then surgically remove the implants from your body. You should know that I will not be able to remove your cortical implant because it is too closely connected with your parietal lobe.”

“So there’ll still be a bit of Borg in me?”

“If you want to put it that way, yes. To remove it would be to risk potentially life-changing brain damage. I will disable this implant, which will break the neural link between you.”

“What if something goes wrong?”

The Doctor meets both of their eyes and explains in a measured voice. “If there is difficulty with disabling the neural interlink, there is a small risk of neurological injury to both of you. But I have performed this procedure on Seven and the Borg children before with no issues. In my medical opinion, the risk of the surgery is insignificant. However, there are a number of likely and foreseeable risks of not doing the surgery.”

“Okay. Fine,” B’Elanna says. “But I’ve got to sort out cover in Engineering first.”

After making various communications to the Captain and Lieutenant Carey, there’s no more stalling that she can do: B’Elanna changes into a blue gown and hops onto a biobed. 

The Doctor closes the arch over her middle, effectively trapping her there- just one of many aspects of medical treatment she hates.

“Blood pressure is a little high,” The Doctor notes.

“I wonder why,” B’Elanna remarks sardonically.

“I will commence the procedure now.”

The Doctor leaning over her with hypospray in hand is the last thing B’Elanna remembers before the room fades to black.

Groggy and confused, B’Elanna cracks one eye open, wincing against the harsh surgical lights. She rubs her face and notices her palms are turning back toward their usual caramel colour.

“Ah, you’re awake,” The Doctor replies. “The procedure was a success, not that that should come as too much of a surprise,” he says triumphantly, as he opens the biobed arch. “I’ve removed the implants from your body. The nanoprobes have been deactivated and will exit naturally over the next few days. Most importantly, your cells are functioning on their own again, and your neural tissue is as good as new.”

“Where’s Seven?”

“Seven is regenerating. She needs to rest after this experience.”

“But she’s okay?” B’Elanna asks, panicky. “Can I see her?” She swings her legs over one side of the bed and immediately regrets it because they feel like jelly and she keels to the side.

“Not so fast.” The Doctor rushes over to support her. “Your body needs time to readjust to a life without enhancements. Some of your muscles have atrophied because of the reliance on the implants. Eating, sleeping, all other biological processes will return over the next couple of days. You must eat if you feel hungry, sleep if you feel tired. You must remain here for observation.”

“In Sick Bay? For how long?”

“The next 48 hours, at least,” he replies cheerily, apparently not noticing the daggers in B’Elanna’s eyes.

“Can’t I recover in my quarters? No offence, Doc, but you know Sick Bay doesn’t bring out the best in me.”

The Doctor sighs theatrically. “While I would certainly not disagree with that, it is my medical opinion that you need to be here.” He turns away and then turns back. “But I will revisit your progress tomorrow.”

Hollow. If there was a word to describe how B’Elanna feels now, hollow is it. It’s scarcely been a day since the procedure to separate her from Seven, and she hasn’t seen her since- The Doctor prescribed an extended regeneration cycle for her. So now she’s in her quarters attempting to comply with The Doctor’s orders to rest, having managed to persuade him that she didn’t need to stay in Sick Bay any longer. They aren’t really her quarters though- she’d barely moved in after moving out of her shared quarters with Tom. Not that there was much to move- her one bag of stuff sits in the corner of the room not yet unpacked.

The walls pulse amber; the ship is at yellow alert again. She calls up to the Bridge, hoping to be told to report to Engineering, but Chakotay gently confirms the medical orders to stay off-duty. The yellow alert was precautionary, he says; various secondary systems were misbehaving due to the effects of the nebula, but nothing that Carey couldn’t handle.

Sitting alone with her thoughts is a painful affair. She’s aching with an enduring sense of loss; a void where Seven’s presence had been cut out of her with surgical precision. It had been so abrupt. But then again, she was no stranger to abrupt changes. The person she was today had been stuck back together from splintered fragments of who she had been more than once. She had once been a daughter with a dad who was part of her life, who took her camping and read her stories, until the day she wasn’t. She had once been on the road to becoming a Starfleet Officer, until the day she wasn’t. She had once been a freedom fighter, until the day she wasn’t. Each time she had rebirthed, she had left her past behind, allowing the memories to melt away like the morning frost. Better to forget it ever happened because if she forgets, she’ll not remember she ever lost anything in the first place.

This is just the latest change, she tells herself stoically, running her hand along her arm and finding no trace of the implants. She had once been assimilated, and today she was not. More than that, there was no evidence that it had ever happened. It would be easy to forget, to cocoon herself from the truth, wouldn’t it?

She tries to distract herself by reading. Her eyes skim over the same paragraph in a paper on warp field theory, but the words make no sense. They enter her brain in disorder, as though they are resisting being pawns in this game of self-deception she is playing. She tosses the PADD on the bedside table with a clatter and lays her head on the pillow.

Over and over, her mind returns to that kiss. Was it real? She knows her feelings are beyond gratitude, familiarity, or any of the other white lies she could tell herself. It’s different to anything she’s felt before; it’s  _ more  _ than anything she’s felt before.

“I’m in love,” she whispers to an empty room, marvelling at how that word tastes. She has said _‘I_ _ love you _ _’_ before. She said it to Tom, before they had embarked on their ill-fated relationship, when they were floating helplessly in space while their oxygen reserves drained away. She said it in the hopeless expectation of death. Had she meant it then, or had she simply wanted to say it once, before she died? She remembers whispering it to him sometimes after sex, but it had felt like a duty. Did she mean it now?

Doubt, which has always lurked in the shadows of B’Elanna’s mind, sneers at her from the darkness. How can she presume to know what love is if she has never truly felt it? And even if her feelings were true, how could a Borg automaton feel the same? It’s an illusion, doubt whispers, nothing more than a piteous consolation after being dumped by Tom. Desperate, unlovable B’Elanna- seeking out comfort from the most unlikely of sources, doubt hisses. It was the unique environment of the unimatrix that lowered her inhibitions, that tricked her into making a pass at Seven of Nine. But it wasn’t real. How could it be? Her eyes grow wet and heavy. Her body sinks into the bed like an anchor, weighed down with exhaustion.

The door chime rouses her from sleep. Naomi Wildman bounds in as soon as she opens the door, barrelling into her midriff to give her a hug. Icheb is here too, not as physically demonstrative, but his eyes look at her kindly. And there’s Seven. Her breath catches and for the first time since the operation, she dares to seek out a glimmer of hope.

“What are you doing here?”

Icheb holds up the box he’s carrying. “There is still all to play for in the Kadis Kot Championship.”

“It’s the deciding game between you and Icheb, remember?” Naomi pulls on her hand to lead her to the table.

Happiness floods the hollow until she thinks she might burst. If Seven is here, it must mean something, she thinks. Something good. For the moment, hope prevails over doubt.

Seven interjects. “The children are aware that you require a period of recovery and may need rest. You do not have to play. But they missed your presence.”

“We  _ all _ missed your presence,” Naomi corrects, her eyes rolling.

“Yes,” Seven accepts the correction.

The faces of the kids were finely balanced between respecting B’Elanna’s medical needs and hoping that she’d be able to play. She cracks her knuckles together. “Okay, show me what you got, kid.”

B’Elanna was acutely aware of Seven next to her as she set up the board. Kadis Kot was a game of strategy; a less complex and more fun form of chess. Ordinarily, she adopted an aggressive strategy, a rush to capture as many pieces of her opponent as possible. Sometimes her shock tactics would prevail, and sometimes she would be overwhelmed. But the games were always over quickly. Not today though. Today she concentrated on matching Icheb’s moves- playing conservatively, not risking too much- because the real prize she was playing for was more time together like this.

Eventually, Icheb’s patience wins the day.

“Well played,” she says.

“It was a good match. You varied your tactics. I did not anticipate many of your strategies.”

“Sometimes change is good,” she replies.

“Yes,” he agrees thoughtfully. A glance passed between him and Naomi.

The girl hops down from her chair. “I’ve gotta go home- my mom’s making dinner tonight. Do you want to come too and read the next Flotter book?”

The question is directed only to Icheb. B’Elanna suspects a conspiracy between the kids to give the adults some time alone, her suspicions all but confirmed when Icheb immediately and enthusiastically agrees. Of course he politely asks Seven for permission, even though he doesn’t really need to. And of course it is impossible for Seven to say no to such a polite request.

Now that they’re alone, B’Elanna’s throat feels tight. The nervousness in the air is palpable. They sit on the sofa, a good metre apart, barely able to hold eye contact. She’s desperate to know what Seven couldn’t say in Sick Bay earlier, but is terrified to ask. She yearns to move closer, but she's frightened of rejection. She hurts with longing. For her part, Seven seems to bring herself to the cusp of saying something several times before ever so slightly crumpling back into the throw cushions. It is a stroke of good fortune when B’Elanna’s stomach breaks the silence with a noisy growl.

“Sorry.”

Seven smiles. “You are hungry.”

“Yeah, I forgot to eat. I’m not used to needing to,” B’Elanna replies. She replicates a plate of fruit for herself. “You want some tea?”

“Yes, please.”

She hadn’t planned it, but when she sets the food and drinks down on the table, she sits closer to Seven, curling one foot under her own lap. The proximity is like a salve that soothes the aching. “Thanks for coming over.”

Seven doesn’t say anything. B’Elanna wonders whether she just doesn’t have the words. What follows is a peculiar slow dance in which both women take sips from their tea, set their cups down on the table and in the process inch closer to each other all without a word.

Once there’s no closer they can get without ending up in each other’s laps they speak at the same time. B’Elanna chuckles. “You first.”

“I am glad that you are back to normal.” Seven’s hand touches B’Elanna’s face just for a moment.

B’Elanna’s arm has snaked around the top of the sofa behind Seven. She picks at the upholstery. “Seven.” She swallows because it’s like her mouth is full of feathers. “About what happened—”

“Yes?”

Seven’s looking back at her with intensity- blue eyes flecked with deeper tones that she hasn’t noticed before. Her brain tries to think of the words to say, to express what she wants, to ask what Seven wants. But none of her words will ever be sufficient. Instead, her hand comes to rest on the back of Seven’s neck. She leans closer. There’s time for either one of them to reconsider, to break away. But neither one does. B’Elanna’s eyes close when she reaches Seven’s lips.

This kiss runs deeper than their first. Seven’s hands trail through B’Elanna’s hair, dark strands winding around her fingers. This time, it is she who injects more passion into the embrace. Her tongue teases B’Elanna’s lips before slipping between them. B’Elanna hears herself moaning against Seven’s mouth. Every part of her body is enlivened.

B’Elanna presses her forehead against Seven’s. It’s an intimate gesture that she has never shared with anyone before because she’s been ashamed of her ridges; of their ugliness. 

“I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you.”

“Regeneration was difficult without you.”

“Where did you go?”

“The place you took me to first. I watched the sun set over the lake. I saw our chipmunk friend again.”

Their hands come together, fingers playing with fingers. Seven shudders when B’Elanna drags the tips of her fingernails over her skin. But there’s something nervous, bordering on frantic, in Seven’s movements, the way she grasps and squeezes B’Elanna’s hand.

“What’s the matter? What did you want to say to me in Sick Bay?”

“Many things,” Seven says. She vaguely gestures towards B’Elanna. “This- between us. I do not know how to—” the sentence just stops like a train that’s run out of track.

“How to?” B’Elanna echoes. She moistens her lips before capturing Seven in another kiss. This time, soft noises emanate unbidden from the woman she’s kissing. “You know how to do that,” she whispers in a breathy understatement.

“I have no experience in romantic relationships.”

“I’m hardly an expert.” B’Elanna lifts their joined hands and touches her lips to one of Seven’s knuckles. She thinks she’s figured out the reason for Seven’s reticence and gallantly decides to put her at ease. “We don’t have to rush anything if you’re not ready. I know this is all new to you. I know you haven’t had a sexual relationship before, and I haven’t either, with a woman I mean, and what I’m trying to say is, we don’t have to rush anything.” B’Elanna stops herself from babbling further because Seven looks faintly amused. “What?”

“While the things you said are true, they are not what I meant.”

“They aren’t?” B’Elanna practically squeaks, cringing.

“You remember I told you the Borg streamline any memories that get added to the Collective?”

“Yeah, to get rid of the irrelevant stuff.”

“Exactly. However, sex is not irrelevant to the Borg. In fact it is deemed extremely relevant to the Borg’s assimilation of the uniqueness of a species. The mechanics of sexual practices and mating rituals are therefore not removed from the Collective’s memory when an individual is assimilated. I know exactly how human and klingon female anatomy functions because that information was stored by the Collective. I am confident that I could perform efficiently as your sexual partner.”

“Woah, slow down.” B’Elanna’s mouth falls agape at how forthrightly Seven is expressing herself. She knows she shouldn’t be, but she’s undeniably aroused by the thought of Seven  _ efficiently _ applying her knowledge to her female anatomy.

“I was not proposing that we engage in non-reproductive copulation right now.”

“Oh,” B’Elanna tries, and quite possibly fails, not to sound disappointed. She makes a mental note to introduce some less academic phrasing to Seven later.

“What I am attempting to explain is that the emotions that accompany sexual acts are irrelevant to the Borg. The memories of physical acts may be preserved in the Collective memory but their meaning, romantic acts and feelings are filtered out. Therefore, beyond sex, I have no understanding of what a relationship entails.”

“Seven-” B’Elanna begins, but Seven squeezes her hand to signal she has more to say.

“Please, I must continue. Since I became an individual, I have believed that romance is a human invention- and a foolish one at that- for the purpose of deceiving oneself that reproductive encounters have some grand cosmic significance. In many of the novels the Captain has given me to read, a recurrent theme is that love can overcome the most unlikely odds, even change the world. Kisses are treated as if they are magic. I assumed that the descriptions were hyperbole; exaggerated for embellishment or artistic flourish. And yet, the way that I feel when I think of you or when we are together is unlike anything I have experienced. When you kissed me I—” Seven trails off, but tightens her grasp of B’Elanna’s hand. “When I told you that you are special to me, I meant it. But I do not know how to be around you, what to say or what to do. I am afraid that I am insufficient. That my time in the Collective has rendered me incapable of being intimate with another person. Broken.”

“You’re not broken,” B’Elanna replies immediately, instinctively. “Or if you are, then I am too because everything you’ve just said, I could say about myself.”

“If we are both broken, perhaps we should not pursue a relationship?”

“That’s not what I meant.” She squeezes Seven’s hand. “What do you want?”

A sweet, chaste kiss is the answer. When B’Elanna’s eyes blink open again, they are met with an intense look. “You will have to show me how,” Seven says, barely above a whisper.

B’Elanna has never been much of a cuddler, but she finds her body curls naturally around Seven’s. She buries her head into the crook of Seven’s neck, as Seven’s arm draws over her. Her breathing slows and she drifts off.

When B’Elanna wakes a little later she’s tucked in bed. Seven must have carried her here. She reads the PADD beside her on the bedside table: ‘ _ I am sorry I could not stay longer. Pleasant dreams, my B’Elanna.’ _

_ ‘My B’Elanna’ _ . She falls back asleep smiling.


	15. Miscommunication

Waking up in a bed in a horizontal position feels really quite unnatural to B’Elanna after the last week of regenerating. Somehow she’s managed to kick off all the blankets. Her body aches from where she’s slept in an awkward fashion and her mind aches from the absence of her sense of Seven. Now that the nanoprobes are no longer maintaining her organic physiology all her bodily functions are reasserting themselves. Her mouth feels dry, her eyes are too and when she blinks her eyelids scratch like sandpaper against her eyes. Her bodily scent is stronger than it has been, though not offensively so. She peers at herself in the mirror after a lingering sonic shower- prodding and pinching her cheeks- her skin tone and the texture of her hair are completely normal again. Once she’s finished reacquainting herself with herself, she pulls on a tank top and pants for what she hopes will be her last day of recuperation.

Seven drops by unannounced while she’s eating breakfast.

“This is a nice surprise,” B’Elanna says, ushering her inside.

“I came to check that you are looking after yourself.”

A few weeks ago, B’Elanna would have perceived this as Borg superiority and rank impertinence. But now she stands at mock attention. “Eating, sleeping, resting, per The Doctor’s orders. How about you- how are the headaches?”

“They have subsided,” Seven replies.

B’Elanna regards her closely; without their neural connection it’s harder for her to read Seven. She’s acutely aware of how much she misses the intimacy of the link- it wasn’t like Seven’s voice had been in her head this whole time, it was more like a presence that blended into the background, like the sound of raindrops on a tin roof. Sometimes the raindrops had fallen louder or softer, but they were always there. And now she doesn’t even know if it’s raining at all. It’s a kind of grief that she’s feeling. She’s grieving the loss of Seven, even as Seven stands right in front of her. It’s complicated and confusing and she overcompensates by bombarding Seven with questions.

“Are you sure? You’d tell me if anything was wrong, right?”

“I would not deceive you,” Seven says, prickly.

B’Elanna reacts to the shift in tone by putting her guard up, too. “I didn’t say you would.”

“Your enquiries after I had answered your first question suggested otherwise.”

“That’s not what I-- “ B’Elanna stops before she cements herself into a defensive posture and takes a deep breath. “I know you wouldn’t deceive me. I know that you were downplaying the pain you were in before. I don't want you to put on a brave face now. I hate not being able to sense you like I could. I’m sorry it sounded like I didn’t believe you.”

Mollified, Seven caresses her cheek with the back of her hand. “I understand. I am finding it hard to adapt without you. I could never lie to you, B’Elanna,” she sighs too. “But you are correct, I did conceal the extent of my discomfort when we were joined. I did so because there was no alternative other than to remain joined while you were healing.”

“You don’t need to protect me from how you’re feeling, even when there’s no alternative. I could’ve said it better. I’m not very good at this.” B’Elanna pulls Seven into her arms, and just like the night before, holding this woman closely blunts the sharpness of the loss that cuts her. She takes a moment to just breathe her in. Being together like this makes her feel invincible. When she next speaks, her voice is lighter.

“Now that we’ve cleared that up, is the only reason you came over to make sure I’m complying with The Doctor’s instructions?”

Soothed by their embrace, Seven smiles. She understands the implicit invitation and bends gracefully to capture B’Elanna’s lips in a richly passionate kiss. B’Elanna’s amazed at how fucking good it is; how quickly Seven has adapted to seemingly know exactly what she wants. She flings her arms around Seven’s neck, her tank top rides up an inch or two, and Seven’s hands take the place of the fabric against her skin. When long fingers slink further up her sides, she gasps. All of the emotional energy that has swirled around them for weeks concentrates into one focus. And right now, that focus is humming low in her body.

Just when her ardor is at the tipping point, B’Elanna pulls back. Even through the haze of her desire Seven’s beauty is resplendent, and B’Elanna wonders how she could have been so oblivious to it for so long.

Seven’s hands cup B’Elanna’s face, her lips find their way back to hers again, like bees to nectar. Kissing feels so completely natural that the awkward silence that descends when they part is jarring. B’Elanna can see that Seven is waiting to pick up a social cue from her to help her navigate this new territory they’re in.

“Thank you for putting me to bed last night, and for your note.”

Seven visibly loosens, relieved that she had taken an appropriate action. In a tone that communicates far more than the polite phrase she has learned from The Doctor’s social lessons she replies, “You are welcome.”

B’Elanna sits down at the table and retrieves her coffee mug. “You got time to sit with me while I eat?”

“I have a few minutes before I must report for duty.”

“What have you got on today?”

“The nebula is causing disruption to some of the secondary systems, which is slowing repairs to the sections damaged by the Borg attack. Lieutenant Carey has requested my assistance in repairs to the main deflector.”

“Smart move,” B’Elanna says approvingly. “I wish I could be there with you. Never been very good at sitting still.”

“Indeed,” Seven remarks drily. “I may have a solution.”

“Oh?”

“The kids would like to see you.”

B’Elanna smiles at Seven’s adoption of her affectionate name for Naomi and Icheb. “I’ve never heard you call them that before.”

“No. But you do.” Seven sighs heavily. “Our situation has changed again and perhaps we have lost something by no longer being connected. I want to keep our traditions.”

“We haven’t lost anything,” B’Elanna insists quietly, even as she struggles to process her own sense of bereavement following the loss of their neural connection. She takes Seven’s hand in her own. “We found each other.”

“Yes,” Seven says softly.

They gaze at each other for a beat. “I’d like to see the kids too. In fact, I have an idea for a project for us to work on together.” There’s a glint in B’Elanna’s eye when she says this.

“A project?”

“A secret project,” B’Elanna clarifies.

“Intriguing. You are not going to tell me what the secret is?”

“Uh uh. Not yet.”

“So, what’s the secret project?” Naomi asks as she plops onto the sofa next to B’Elanna.

B’Elanna motions for Icheb to sit down too as she spreads a couple of PADDs onto the coffee table.

“These are plans of Cargo Bay Two,” Icheb observes.

“Yes. I thought we could design new quarters for you and Seven. And once we’re out of Borg space, we’ll build them.”

“And it’s a secret because we’re going to surprise Seven?” Naomi claps her hands together.

“You got it, kiddo.”

Icheb smiles. “Seven discourages secrets, but I believe this is a worthy exception. There will be some restrictions on design because of the alcoves.”

“I know- but I reckon the three of us can figure something out.”

After a couple of hours, they’ve drawn up plans for two separate living quarters- one for Icheb and one for Seven. Both quarters house their alcoves, living and study spaces. B’Elanna gets up to replicate a coffee while the kids chatter about finishing touches. The replicator whirrs and she turns to pick up the cup only to see the replicator has neglected to fabricate it so the coffee spills out onto the floor.

“Computer- diagnostic on the replicator in my quarters, now,” she barks as she grabs a cloth to mop up the liquid.

_“The replicator is functioning within normal parameters.”_

“Are you kidding me?”

_“Please restate your question.”_

“What’s wrong with it?” Naomi asks.

“I’m not sure,” B’Elanna taps her combadge. “Carey, the replicator in my quarters has malfunctioned - is anything going on?”

_“It’s the ionising effect of the particles in this nebula. We’ve had isolated reports of malfunctions in about a dozen non-essential systems. I’ll get someone out to fix it as soon as I can, but right now we’re concentrating on fixing the propulsion systems.”_

“How are the primary systems holding up?”

_“Unaffected so far, Lieutenant but we’re still working on repairs.”_

“Okay, keep me informed please. Torres out.” She turns to the kids. “Well, since the replicator isn’t replicating- shall we go to the Mess Hall to celebrate completing phase one of the Secret Project?”

The children grab a table, and start comparing notes on colour schemes for the new Borg quarters. B’Elanna stands in the line to get a herbal tea from Neelix, deciding that a coffee infusion at this time in the evening would be counter-productive and looks back toward the kids indulgently. When she turns again, she bumps into someone.

“Watch where you’re going-” she starts irritably, then stops when she comes face to face with Jenny Delaney, whose big brown eyes suddenly look even bigger and browner. “Jenny.”

“Lieutenant T-Torres,” Jenny stutters looking for all the world like she hopes a black hole will appear directly beneath her feet.

B’Elanna looks her up and down. She’s out of uniform and wearing a feminine dress, the demure kind of thing that Tom liked. The kind of thing she’d never wear. It wasn’t just automobiles and television and other artefacts from hundreds of years ago that Tom liked; he also romanticised the idea of traditional relationships, of traditional _women_. “Nice dress. Date night?”

Tom Paris appears from somewhere. He’s wearing his favourite shirt and a frankly overpowering lashing of cologne. He puts his arm around Jenny protectively. The poor woman looks faintly terrified. “Hi B’Elanna.”

B’Elanna finds the nervous looks on Tom and Jenny’s faces really rather amusing. They probably both know that klingons treat infidelity as a cause for bloody revenge, and perhaps they’re worried that she’s about to whip out a _Bat’leth_ to restore her honour. Lucky for them that she doesn’t hold fast to klingon traditions. “How are you?” she asks, flashing a smile that briefly bares her teeth.

“Uhm, good I think,” Tom looks to Jenny for confirmation. “Yeah, we’re good. You’re looking better. Not quite so grey.”

Jenny nods. “Your skin looks great… really great.”

B’Elanna allows an awkward silence to breathe before she says, “Thank you, Jenny,” with each syllable precisely enunciated. The doors behind her have opened and shut. Her favourite vanilla scent cuts through the musky cologne and she signals a look at the kids, who have already turned off their secret project PADDs.

“Lieutenant Torres.” Seven joins the standing group and makes a cursory acknowledgement towards Tom and Jenny.

“Hi Seven,” B’Elanna replies. She can’t help the way her voice drapes over Seven’s name sweet and thick like molasses. Tom’s face rumples in confusion like he’s been presented with some advanced calculus to solve. B’Elanna passes two cups of Neelix’s tea to Seven and tries to affect nonchalance in her tone. “We’re over there if you want to join us.” Seven nods and takes them away.

“You’re still spending time with her, then,” Tom observes slyly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” B’Elanna asks, defensively.

He takes a small step back and puts up his hands. “I just meant you never had much time for her before the mission to the Borg cube, that’s all.”

“Yeah well, my social circle has gone through a bit of a change. Remember?” she says archly and then looks at Jenny. “As has yours.”

“Leave her out of this,” Tom says, his voice noticeably rising in pitch and volume.

“I’m not the one who brought her into it, Tom.”

Tom casts his eyes heavenwards and sighs, playing to an imaginary gallery. “Never get tired of making me the bad guy, huh?”

“I never called you a bad guy. Dishonest, definitely. Cowardly, sure,” B’Elanna retorts, her temper starting to flare.

“Doesn’t it ever get old? Playing the victim?”

“Who's playing? You cheated and you lied about it,” B’Elanna hisses.

“Not exactly broken up over it though, are you?”

“That’s rich. Should I dress in black and be in mourning for the rest of my life?” B’Elanna asks sarcastically.

“Let’s just go,” Jenny whispers to Tom, tugging his elbow.

“Great idea, Jenny. I’m gonna leave you two to it,” B’Elanna replies icily.

“To have coffee with Seven of Nine. Right.”

The way Tom says Seven’s name upsets her. He’s just fishing for something to hurt her with, surely. He can't possibly _know_ , can he? Her heart beats faster, she feels exposed, vulnerable, but just manages to avoid taking the bait. “Have a wonderful evening,” she says, insincerity dripping from every syllable.

She looks at Seven chatting with the kids. A lump forms in her throat at how wonderful and fragile and terrifying her feelings are. Aware of Tom’s eyes burning into her back, she takes the seat furthest from Seven. _If you hide, they can’t hurt you_.

“Am I permitted to know what you have been working on today?” Seven asks the children.

“I’m sorry, Seven,” Naomi replies, “it’s classified.”

“I see,” Seven replies, her eyebrow quirking upwards. She glances at Icheb, perhaps hoping for some ex-Borg solidarity.

“The project is on a strict need-to-know basis,” he deadpans.

“Understood,” Seven plays along. “However, if I knew then perhaps I could assist.”

“We’ve got it covered,” Naomi replies with all the confidence of the Captain’s Assistant.

“Indeed.” Seven’s ocular implant twitches in amusement and she glances at B’Elanna, hoping to draw her into the conversation.

“You know what, I’m actually pretty beat,” B’Elanna says. “I think I better catch up on some more sleep.”

It’s partly the truth- now that she’s back to operating purely biologically again it’s a lot more demanding than having thousands of tiny little nanoprobe helpers zooming around her body and she’s starting to flag a little. Partly it’s an excuse obscuring a different truth- that something she’s wanted so much for so long - to matter to someone, to really matter to someone - sits in the palm of her hand, delicate as a butterfly. She wants to grab it, to stop it from flying away but she’s scared of holding too tightly, of crushing it. And partly, or maybe mostly, her instinct is telling her to hide her feelings from public view, to keep them a secret. To keep them safe.

“But you didn’t even drink your tea yet,” Naomi observes plaintively.

“Naomi, you remember what we talked about?” Seven says.

“Yes- that without the nanoprobes Lieutenant Torres would be tired for a while,” she remembers. “But we’re having fun.”

B’Elanna smiles at the thought of Seven explaining the situation to Naomi. It’s small acts of kindness like this that haven’t featured much in any of her past relationships. Seven makes her feel cared for in a way no one else ever has. “I know and I promise we will again soon. Besides I’ve got to rest up if I’m ever going to beat any of you at Kadis Kot ever again.”

“Would you like me to walk with you to your quarters?” Seven asks quietly.

B’Elanna sighs. She would like nothing more than that, but she’ll be damned if she leaves with Seven while Tom is watching them like a prurient hawk. “It’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Seven nods, but her eyes brim with unasked questions.


	16. Inevitable

B’Elanna’s been laying on her bed staring out into the nebula, at the trillions of particles of dust for who knows how long. Over the next millennia, these dust particles will pull each other closer together under gravity, accumulating more and more mass, like a snowball, until eventually a star is birthed. She’s trying to figure out what she’s feeling, but it’s hard because no feeling is a single speck of dust that can be easily identified. A feeling is an accretion of many specks of dust, of everything that has come before all mashed together. Her life is immeasurably better because Seven is in it. But the severance of their neural link has sent her into a tailspin, and everything is uncertain. Can she love? Can she  _ be _ loved? She wants to, but perhaps wanting it is not enough.

Love is vulnerability and in vulnerability lies pain. B’Elanna knows that every intimate relationship she’s had has soured, everyone she’s cared for has left her in some fashion or another. Why would it be different with Seven?  _ Because it is different with Seven _ , says a little voice inside of her. If only she could block out everything and just listen to just that voice. Maybe then she could be brave enough to risk being vulnerable, to risk feeling pain.

The door chimes once, twice before she gets up to answer it. It’s Seven, checking in on her. Of course it is. Seven is kind and thoughtful and protective. The nagging feeling that she doesn’t deserve Seven plagues her. The dread feeling in her gut that this too will end is too much to bear. It would be so much easier to put up a barrier, to keep her at distance now rather than later before too many feelings get involved, before those feelings snowball into a force of nature that can't be contained. Maybe that horse has already bolted from the stable.

“Are you alright?” Seven asks, hands clasped behind her back, conscientiously giving B’Elanna space.

“I’m just tired,” B’Elanna replies with a shake of the head, her arms folded pensively across her body. It’s only as convincing as a half-truth can be, which is to say not sufficiently convincing for Seven.

“I believe there is more to it,” Seven says, taking a small step closer. Gingerly she rests her hands on B’Elanna’s crossed forearms, encouraging them apart. “You can tell me anything, too. You do not need a brave face with me.”

B’Elanna cannot resist the embrace. She leans in and sighs when Seven places a kiss on her forehead. Why is she so afraid of letting go and falling into this thing completely- Seven has caught her before, hasn’t she? “I miss you,” she murmurs, her head resting against Seven’s chest, tucked beneath her chin.

“I am here,” Seven says, and B’Elanna can feel her relax. They sway together for a little while- back and forth in a comforting rhythm. “Did something in the Mess Hall upset you?”

B’Elanna shrugs, not entirely meeting Seven’s eyes. “Just a couple of words with Tom. Nothing major,” she sighs and wanders to the window. “Can we not talk about him?” Of course it’s not really Tom she’s avoiding talking about. In the grand scheme of things he’s irrelevant. 

She stares into the nebula through the window- the light from Voyager’s engines refracts through and reflects off the cloud to create a marbling of all different colours. The effect is like being caught in a vivid, impressionist sunset. She hates herself for leaving the Mess Hall earlier because of Tom’s innuendo. Why should she care one iota what he thinks? When she had found out about his affair, she’d accused him of cowardice for not having the gumption to tell her the truth about his feelings. Ironic then, that she was now guilty of the same offence. Why can’t she admit how she feels, even to herself? It’s a question she’s too tired to explore just now.

When she turns back to Seven, she catches her eyes jump upwards from apparently staring at her backside. She had gotten changed into casual pants and a tank top earlier, the material is a little thinner and a little clingier than her uniform and it appears that Seven has taken favourable notice. She bites her lip- the feeling she has now, one of basic physical desire is one she understands. And maybe it’s wrong to act on it without confronting the tangle of all of her other feelings. But really all she’s doing is surrendering herself to what had become an inevitability. Resistance is, after all, futile.  “C’mere,” she drawls.

When Seven joins her at the window, B’Elanna can see her pupils are blown into big black pools. Bathed in the suffuse light from the nebula, she’s extraordinarily beautiful. B’Elanna places Seven’s hands just above her hips.

“You know, I really wanted you to stay this morning.” As she’d hoped, Seven’s fingers steal underneath her top to rest against her goose-fleshed skin.

“I did not want to leave.”

“What do you want now?” B’Elanna asks, her arms first circling Seven’s waist before her hands explore lower, stroking the contours of Seven’s backside.

“I want to kiss you,” comes the earnest reply.

“Then kiss me.” B’Elanna’s body first tingles when Seven’s lips touch hers and then blazes when Seven’s tongue slides into her mouth to massage her own. She squeezes the round of Seven’s bum and gasps when she feels Seven touch the sides of her breasts. It is enough to break the kiss. Blue eyes, aroused and hesitant ask a silent question.

“I don’t want to stop. I want you,” B’Elanna says, pushing Seven against the bulkhead. She kisses her soundly, pressing her thigh in between Seven’s legs, her own body thrumming in response to the heat she feels. Her lips turn their attention to Seven’s neck.

Suddenly, B’Elanna is lifted into the air. The effortless strength Seven possesses turns her on even more. She wraps her legs around Seven’s waist. She pulls out Seven’s hair pin, releasing the blonde tresses to cascade down past her shoulders. She runs her fingers through it, luxuriating in its softness. “Take me to bed,” she breathes into Seven’s ear.

Seven carries her into the bedroom kissing her all the while. When B’Elanna is returned to earth, her feet threaten to give way.

“May I take this off?” Seven asks, pulling gently on B’Elanna’s top. B’Elanna raises her arms over her head and nods to give her assent.

There’s no artifice in the way Seven looks at her body, no disguise to the ardent appreciation in her eyes. B’Elanna has never felt more desired. She shimmies out of her pants, leaving her in nothing but her bra and underwear. Her eyes flit between the look of yearning playing on Seven’s face and her kiss-swollen parted lips. “How do I get you out of this?” she asks urgently, indicating the biosuit.

Seven begins to reach behind her neck seeking the fastening, but stops. “My body-- it is not--” she falters apologetically.

B’Elanna puts a finger against Seven’s lips. Her blood is racing- it gives her courage. And when she has courage, she can say the words she holds inside. Without blinking or hesitation she says, “Look at me. I know you can see how quick my pulse is, how big my eyes must be, hear the heaviness in my breath, feel the heat rolling off of me. That’s all because of you. I want to see you.” Her hands, trembling, take the place of Seven’s. She figures out the clasp mechanism and unfastens it.

When B’Elanna peels the biosuit away, there’s no other garment beneath. Seven stands before her, completely naked and B’Elanna is entranced by how lovely, how sexy she is. Mini-constellations of implants twinkle on her thigh and several bands of silver run around her torso just above her diaphragm, legacies of her past. Her breasts are round and sensuous. B’Elanna takes Seven’s hands. “You’re beautiful.” She presses one of Seven’s hands to the juncture between her legs. Even through her underwear, the wet heat is undeniable.

Something stirs in Seven then. She kisses B’Elanna on the mouth passionately, all the while pressing into her more firmly with her hand. She backs B’Elanna up against the bed until she flops onto it. With their eyes locked together, B’Elanna unhooks and divests of her bra, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips.

Seven may have the Collective memory and anatomical knowledge of all manner of humanoid bodies and an unimaginable number of sexual encounters, but neither of those things hold a candle to the simple feeling in this room right now. With an expression that sears into B’Elanna, Seven pushes her down onto the bed. “So soft,” she whispers as she crawls on top of B’Elanna to kiss her once more.

The weight of Seven above her is delicious. B’Elanna pulls her closer, wanting to squeeze more of their voluptuous bodies together. Her legs wrap around Seven’s hips and they rock back and forth bringing the needs between them to a crescendo.

Seven kisses B’Elanna’s neck and begins sliding down her body. Seven’s palms tease her breasts before her lips capture each nipple in turn, her tongue flattening against the aroused buds. B’Elanna’s chest heaves as Seven travels lower still, caressing the swell of her belly. Seven’s fingers dip into the waistband of B’Elanna’s underwear, who raises her hips off the mattress, her eyes enthusiastically communicating her wish for Seven to remove her last piece of clothing. B'Elanna raises herself up on her elbows to get a better view of Seven, face flushed, settling between her legs. Seven strokes B’Elanna’s inner thighs, teasing her into opening herself up wider. And then Seven’s mouth descends, covering B’Elanna intimately. B'Elanna sighs deeply, fingers weaving into Seven’s hair. Seven’s tongue swirls around her clitoris, igniting a desire that spreads through her body like wildfire. While Seven’s mouth and lips and tongue weave magic around her clitoris, Seven slips her fingers inside her, touching her in a place that none of her past lovers had ever found. She can feel a wave gathering inside her with turbulent speed.

“Come here, I want you closer,” B’Elanna calls out, pulling Seven towards her. She tastes herself all over Seven’s lips when they kiss and she rolls her hips harder against Seven’s hand. She can no longer hold back the wave inside her. With her head thrown back, neck taut, she cries out as the crest of her orgasm breaks and crashes through her body. She loses track of how long she lays there afterwards, holding Seven close, her body tingling from the intensity of it all- a minute passes by, or two? - time has ceased to be a meaningful concept.

B’Elanna places a kiss on Seven’s neck. “That was amazing,” she whispers in her ear. She rolls them over so she’s straddling Seven. Her hands roam freely to caress her lover’s body. The sight and feel of Seven’s female form, her curves and lines, the way her breasts move with the rise and fall of her chest kindles such arousal within. She wonders whether this aspect of her sexuality has always been there- dormant all these years, or whether she has actively suppressed it. Either way, something has unlocked within her. She bends down to taste Seven’s lips, pressing the lengths of their bodies together, marvelling at how their soft curves yield to bring them closer. Her thigh presses between Seven’s legs and she groans at the slick heat she feels there. Her fingers trace Seven’s lips. “I don’t really know what to do,” she admits.

Seven takes B’Elanna’s fingers into her mouth sensuously and then guides them downwards. B’Elanna’s heart thuds as her fingertips trail over Seven’s sternum, over the synthetic striations banded across her torso, through the rough triangle of hair until finally Seven presses her hand against her clitoris. “Touch me here,” Seven says.

B’Elanna can feel the thrumming of the velvet folds. She concentrates on making stroking movements in a rhythm and pressure that she herself enjoys, paying attention to Seven’s responses and adapting to give her more of what makes her gasp with pleasure.

When she hears Seven say,  _ I want you inside me _ , B’Elanna swallows hard. Seven is so wet with arousal that her finger slides in easily. She moves slowly, pushing in deeper. A second finger joins the first and she uses the pad of her thumb against Seven’s clitoris. Seven lets out a moan as B’Elanna curls her fingers. B’Elanna feels something give and then she scents blood. Just a little, but it scares her and she stills her hand. “I’m sorry. Have I hurt you?”

“No. Please do not stop,” Seven breathes, wrapping her legs around B’Elanna tightly, her fingernails digging into her back.

“You’re sure?”

“I am certain.” The look of sheer want that Seven gives her is so sharp that B’Elanna is impaled on it. 

The significance of Seven’s blood hits B’Elanna like a thunderstrike. She is and shall always be Seven’s first lover. Her own blood roars in her ears, a scarlet rush to invigorate her, spurring her to move inside her lover with unbridled passion. The heat between them builds, and when Seven’s walls pulse hard against her fingers, she draws back to watch the expression of ecstatic abandon transform Seven’s face.

Afterwards, Seven’s head rests in the crook of B’Elanna’s shoulder, their bodies still trembling. B’Elanna draws the covers over them and kisses the top of Seven’s head lovingly, inhaling the scent of her hair.

“Can you stay?” B’Elanna asks, “or do you have to regenerate?”

“I can stay for a while,” Seven replies, cuddling close.

“That was incredible. It’s never been like that for me,” B’Elanna murmurs, tiredness beginning to set in.

“I did not think it could be quite so overwhelming. Quite so wonderful,” Seven replies, searching for superlatives. She caresses B’Elanna’s cheek with her augmented hand.

B’Elanna fights to stay awake for as long as she can, but the warmth and comfort she is cocooned in induces a blissful sleep.


End file.
